Ranged Attacks

WarKirby

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One thing that really excited me about FF, (and one of the primary reasons I downloaded it in the first place) was the concept of archers being able to bombard from a distance with arrows. This just seems so right and obvious, it's a shame it wasn't in vanilla civ to begin with.

But while the concept is great, it's actual implementation is kind of disappointing. I think it's too weak, for the most part, and perhaps overpowered in certain situations.

The way it works, as far as I can tell, is doing a random amount of damage, to a single unit in a stack, which is capped at 20%. Meaning that you can't weaken anyone below 80% health.

The cap is my biggest problem. 20% damage can be kind of useful, but it just doesn't feel like enough. I'd really love to see no cap at all, so it could actually be possible to kill things.

If the cap were just removed as is though, it would be horribly overpowered. BEcause as near as I can tell, the 20% damage it does seems to be just that, an arbitary application of roughly 20%, whether it's to a warrior, or a level 20 phalanx.

I think it would be nice to have the damage much more dependant on the strength of the unit. The amount of damage it does would be calculated based on the user's attack strength, versus the defender's defence strength. Roughly equivilant to what the odds would be for a battle.

For example, an archer shooting a warrior in open ground, would do roughly 50% damage, as they're exactly equal. Shooting an axeman should do significantly less, although not quite as much less as the archer's odds of attacking would be against the axeman, because that would be worthless.

I'm thinking, it should use only the base defence strength of the unit, not any additional bonuses they have, like Combat promotions, etc. However, some other things should affect it.

Some math work will be required here to find a suitable formula, but the main idea being that archers would be very effective against warriors, moderately good against axemen, and kind of poor (but not useless) against champions. Then moving up to longbowmen, they should make mincemeat of axemen(and warriors), do reasonably well against champions, and be somewhat mediocre against phalanxes (they have big shields)

Being in a city could offer 30% resistance to ranged attacks (you have buildings to hide in)
And having walls, or a palisade, could add another 20% resistance
Being in a forest could provide a 40% resistance bonus (arrows hit trees)

As I mentioned, I don't think most promotion bonuses should affect defence against ranged attacks, since how good you are at beating someone up, isn't going to save you from an arrow through the chest.

An exception however, the Cover promotion, since it relates directly. It's 40% versus archery units wouldn't be applied, but it would provide a 20% resistance to ranged attacks, which would be used.

Also, heroes should have a 40% natural resistance to it. Not because they're heroes. But because a hero is one man (or woman), and when you're firing arrows blindly into an area, you have a much lower chance of hitting someone if there's only one person there, as opposed to a small group of troops.

Similar to that concept, I think there should be additional resistance to ranged attacks, as you take damage. Equal to maybe 0.3* the percentage of damage currently taken, so a unit 60% damaged would have 20% resistance. The idea here, being that as people in the group are killed, their numbers thin out, and so there are less targets for the barrage to hit, meaning less chance of hitting something.

On the offensive side, I think standing on a hill, or inside a city, should provide a bonus to the archers doing the shooting. +25% each respectively. As the high vantage point gives them a better view of the target, and a longer effective range. There could also be a few ranged attack specific promotions, that would give % bonuses to ranged attack damage. These would compete with the City Defence promotions, giving players a tactical decision to make, as to how to promote archers.


I see archery combat in two different ways.

The first, is the direct combat. What happens when one unit moves onto the tile of another. In this, I imagine the archers unloading as many shots into the oncoming enemy as they can (that's where the first strikes come in), and then pulling out a sword/knife/club when they get in close.

The ranged combat, I see as a barrage. The archers all aiming high, and just firing arrows blindly into a general area, usually because the enemy isn't close enough to aim at properly yet.

With that in mind, I'm wondering about the targeting system of it. I'm thinking, rather than attacking the strongest unit in the stack, barrages should just hit one random unit in the stack.


This has been kind of long winded I know, but I feel the ranged combat system as is, is kind of missed potential. It makes a nice novelty, but a mage with maelstrom can do up to 50% damage to everything in a massive radius. And that doesn't feel overpowered.

Lastly, I think it would be nice to have a hard cap of 95% damage in one barrage. It should be possible, I think, to completely kill a unit with barrage, but not easy, and not really worth the effort. That cap would mean a full health unit would take at least two barrages. And in any case, only a highly promoted longbowman vs a weak warrior is really going to approach that much damage.

What does everyone think?
 
I find the ideas very good. One point about the Archers standing on a Hill, though. The bonus should only applied if the other unit is not also on a hill.
As for the resistances, usually, ranged attack to-hit modifiers are applied to the attacker in ranged combat. An arrow will do the same amount of damage, if it hit, either in a forest or on open ground.
So, I thing the barrage should be a two stage combat. First, a to-hit roll, to see how much you have hit, and then, a damage, to see how much the enemy shields/armor have managed to block.
The resistances for terrain modifiers, as well as bonuses from height advandages should be given to the to-hit roll. The arrow damage is not upgradable, unless coming from a better bow. Thus, Drill promotions could give a damage bonus to the barage damage, IMO.
 
Not so keen on Archers and lognbowmen. having Barrage attacks. The AI could never get the hang of them in Age of Ice and it seems like quite a long distance to be shooting arrows. Defensive Strike is better.

Quite happy to see Seige Weapons getting barrage attacks though.
 
I agree with Jabie. I like to think of the squares being at least a couple of miles accross. I don't like the idea of my archer going to the edge of the 5 mile square he is in, shooting into the square next to him, and hitting somebody that might be a few miles away.

An archer might get a ew hundred yards from their enemy and shoot. Then the enemy charges the archer. First strikes are what the archers woul hit before the lines meet.

The most accurate mechanism is the defensive strikes. Archers lined up behind the units that will o the hand to hand fighting.


Of course, I also have the same scale problem with most of the spells. Maelstrom damags everyone within 12 mmiles of a caster, rings of fire that are 10 miles wide, ireballs exploding for five miles, etc.
 
The problem is there are others (myself for example) that think squares are smaller, and they can't please everyone.
 
But while the concept is great, it's actual implementation is kind of disappointing. I think it's too weak, for the most part, and perhaps overpowered in certain situations.

Aye - it's useful in some cases (especially when defending a city - you can weaken the attackers whilst they bombard/prepare and further reduce their chances of success), but less so in others (you need units other than the bombard archers in order to use them offensively.

The way it works, as far as I can tell, is doing a random amount of damage, to a single unit in a stack, which is capped at 20%. Meaning that you can't weaken anyone below 80% health.

The cap is my biggest problem. 20% damage can be kind of useful, but it just doesn't feel like enough. I'd really love to see no cap at all, so it could actually be possible to kill things.

That would be "a very bad thing" (tm). A stack of doom of Civ3 proportions - no risk, unless faced by a larger stack. Whoever fires first is going to win.

If the cap were just removed as is though, it would be horribly overpowered. BEcause as near as I can tell, the 20% damage it does seems to be just that, an arbitary application of roughly 20%, whether it's to a warrior, or a level 20 phalanx.

The relative strength is already a factor and the cap depends on the unit type. If you check on the changelog, there is the following entry...

Code:
13. Archers (and unique variants) gain Ranged Attack. Range 1, Strength 2, Cannot reduce enemy below 80% health.
14. Longbows (and unique variants) gain Ranged Attack. Range 1, Strength 3, Cannot reduce enemy below 70% health.
15. Crossbows gain Ranged Attack. Range 1, Strength 5, Cannot reduce enemy below 60% health.
16. Arquebus gains Ranged Attack. Range 1, Strength 5, Cannot reduce enemy below 40% health.
17. Flurry gains Ranged Attack. Range 1, Strength 6, Cannot reduce enemy below 50% health.
18. Marksman gains Ranged Attack. Range 2, Strength 5, Cannot reduce enemy below 60% health.
19. Gilden Silveric gains Ranged Attack (as per Archer).
20. Arthendain gains Ranged Attack (as per Crossbow).
21. Horse Archers gain Ranged Attack. Range 1, Strength 2, Cannot reduce enemy below 85% health.

There does seem to be an issue here at the moment though - when first implemented, each archer was inflicting a varying amount of damage vs opponents, around the 10% mark vs warriors and less vs stronger units. In a test I just ran however it was consistently 20% vs Warriors and Axemen, 18% vs Champions and 14% vs Phalanx. Need to check what has changed, they're currently doing more damage than they should...

For example, an archer shooting a warrior in open ground, would do roughly 50% damage, as they're exactly equal. Shooting an axeman should do significantly less, although not quite as much less as the archer's odds of attacking would be against the axeman, because that would be worthless.

That would only be an option if the warrior were massively stronger in direct combat than the archer - making the archer effectively a "ranged only" unit that lost to melee. Otherwise, the archer becomes a much stronger unit overall.

In gameplay terms, the archer is a unit that supports others in offense, or leads a defense. It is not designed to be a solo-offensive unit. That is true in FfH (the disparity between offense and defense strengths) and remains so here. They defend more ably on hills already (as with Civ4 itself), but gaining an offensive bonus seems strange in that the enemy is very unlikely to wander close enough to a hill full of archers for them to shoot, unless they are attacking themselves. Offensive archers have always been a difficult prospect to manage and they have rarely been used to chase units from the field, but to weaken them prior to a cavalry or infantry charge.
 
I agree with Jabie. I like to think of the squares being at least a couple of miles accross. I don't like the idea of my archer going to the edge of the 5 mile square he is in, shooting into the square next to him, and hitting somebody that might be a few miles away.

....

The most accurate mechanism is the defensive strikes. Archers lined up behind the units that will o the hand to hand fighting.

I agree here. I think that, with defensive strikes, archers no longer need offensive strikes. Leave offensive strikes to siege.
 
Ranged attacks always deal a set amount of damage under the same curcumstances. Everything that affects normal combat will affect ranged combat. The problem is that it uses air strength which does not seem to scale the same way as normal strength. It might be worth it to look for the formula that decides what damage it deals.

The nifty thing with ranged attack is that it actually counts as an attack. this means it cancells the unit's fortify bonus and does not allow it to conduct a defensive strike unless it has blitz. This creates a nice strategic choice between staying and defending and ranged attacking. The problem is that it is usually never worth it because it can only deal 20% damage. I made a thread suggesting ranged attacks a while back, and I mostly intended them to be used to stop pillagers (as an axeman stack would usually end up doing if it could not take the city) or when you have many archers in the city. Raising the damage cap would make that choice more strategic, and not be overpowering as it can only hit one unit per archer and makes the unit loose it's fortify bonus and defensive strike.
 
They defend more ably on hills already (as with Civ4 itself), but gaining an offensive bonus seems strange in that the enemy is very unlikely to wander close enough to a hill full of archers for them to shoot, unless they are attacking themselves. Offensive archers have always been a difficult prospect to manage and they have rarely been used to chase units from the field, but to weaken them prior to a cavalry or infantry charge.

If you are going to approach this from a "historic" perspective, then perhaps you should also consider the exception to this: the horsearcher. They were quite capable of routing and/or annihilation of enemy units (see Carrhae :sniper:).

Another Point: the bombardment mechanics for the Chislev rock raven seems to be similiar to the archers, and it also scales only slightly with the power of the attacked unit.
 
I don't think using a ranged attack should cancel fortify bonuses for 2 reasons.

1) it makes no sense
2) it makes the AI a lot less likely to use them ( a great example are AI archers fortified in a city that will not use it even if you camp units right next to the city )
 
There isn't much you can do about not cancelling the fortify bonus, And that usually makes it not worth it as you weaken the enemy 20% at most and you loose the 25% combat bonus. It does somewhat make sense if you imagine that the archers have to move to a more advantageous position to attack. This is another reason the cap should be increased

The AI not using it when you are attacking its city is actually a good move on the AI's part as it is currently implemented since you will attack the city and it will have better odds if it does not attack. I have seen the AI ranged attack you when you only have a few units or when the archers are in the field.
 
sure, the AI not using it is actually smart since they know that they would lose a 25% bonus in exchange for 20% damage, a bad tradeoff. but that's exactly the problem: if using a ranged attack is actually detrimental, something is wrong imho :D

I'm pretty sure that it can be coded in such a way that when you use ranged attack, it checks if you had fortify bonuses and reapplies them after the ranged attack. not that I'm a coder of course :lol:
 
That would be "a very bad thing" (tm). A stack of doom of Civ3 proportions - no risk, unless faced by a larger stack. Whoever fires first is going to win.

An idea for this, then.

Counter Strikes!

Whenever a stack is bombarded, the strongest unit capable of a ranged attack in the recieving stack, gets to fire back.

In this case, capable means that it hasn't already done a ranged attack this turn.

Also, there would be no counter-counter-strike. That would quickly get out of hand.

This way, if a stack of archers pulls up next to your hilltop defensive position and starts firing in, you can answer with your own barrage, and your position gives you the advantage.



A lot of people here keep mentioning "offensive strikes"
While it is definitely true that this concept could be used for offence, I've tried to structure this design primarily as a defensive tool. Notably, I'm not suggesting that archers gain the ability to move and barrage in the same turn. That restriction should still remain. I've tried to include a primary focus on firing from hills, and cities, which are obviously known for being defensive positions. I've also mentioned many possible ways to defend against it, the idea being that none of those are going to be available to your enemy, if you use it defensively. It's wise to strip away all forest tiles adjacent to a city, so an enemy can't use them against you, for example. A primary idea in my design here, was a city full of archers raining death down upon beseigers, who are stuck in open ground outside the walls and have no cover.

I wrote this post, not just because it seemed cool, but also to solve a known problem in the Civ IV engine. Forts are useless. With no zone of control rule, unless a fort or other defensive position entirely blocks a chokepoint, the enemy can and will simply walk around you, and continue on to their goal.
Being able to do barrage strikes from fortress ramparts, would actually become meaningful with this kind of concept. Forts would be useful in more than just 2-entrance chokepoints. An archer in a fort would effectively have a zone of control, and anyone trying to get past the fort, or assault it, is going to get some arrows in the face first.
 
[to_xp]Gekko;7734247 said:
I'm pretty sure that it can be coded in such a way that when you use ranged attack, it checks if you had fortify bonuses and reapplies them after the ranged attack. not that I'm a coder of course :lol:

This must be possible.

The Treetop Defence spell instantly fortifies you, so there's definitely a way to apply a fortification bonus.
 
This has been kind of long winded I know, but I feel the ranged combat system as is, is kind of missed potential. It makes a nice novelty, but a mage with maelstrom can do up to 50% damage to everything in a massive radius. And that doesn't feel overpowered.

Just reading back through it again and noticed this - reminded me that Maelstrom should only be 30% now, because it did feel overpowered (was changed in FfH sometime back and having played a few scenarios before and after, I agree with the change).

====

In anycase, there are certainly quite a few things that can be done with the ranged attacks, but I'm wary of making them a replacement for standard attacks. That wasn't what was in mind when adding them - it's a support feature and a fairly potent one (was just testing units like-for-like and archer bombardment can swing odds 40% or so in favour of the supported unit, simply due to the decrease in both Combat strength and number of HP damage required to kill the unit)

The two things I'm looking at are allowing City-defending archers to retain their fortification bonus when making a ranged strike and increasing the influence of comparative strengths. The comparative strengths will take promotions into account though, as Combat 5 represents a battle hardened unit - both tougher and better trained - which will be more able to withstand a hail of arrows than a green unit who drop their shields and run in panic or fall to the ground at the first flesh wound...

===

Regarding Horse-Archers being an unusual unit (used for both ranged attacks and routing) - that is covered quite well by the fact they have both a ranged attack, decent standard attack and high movement.

===

So far as the cap is concerned - it's easy to self-mod if you really want to see it higher - but if you find yourself building archers because they're better than any of the alternatives, then things have gone too far. The changes were made at a time that archers were considered a weak option - I think they're now a useful, but not overwhelming choice.
 
I've done some rebalancing on these, especially with regard to a couple of things that didn't work quite the way I thought they did.

Firstly, the unit strengths are a *lot* more important. The original BtS formula included a "smoothing" factor, which meant the damage was always very similar (20% vs Warrior, 17% vs Champion for instance). That is now gone, and the strengths are squared before comparison (which amplifies the difference).

For an archer...

Code:
		Original	New
vs Warrior	  20%		13%
vs Axeman	  19%		 7%
vs Champion	  17%		 3%
vs Phalanx	  13%		 1%

===

I also checked over the caps. Standard longbows had the wrong cap (they had a standard archer cap) whilst the longbow UUs had the correct cap. I've also added a little to the low-end unit caps to compensate for the fact they'll be doing less damage per shot on average (due to the increased importance of unit strength). Archers for instance are now 25% from 20%, Longbows are 40% from 30% (which is what they should have been, they were actually 20%).
 
Speaking of ranged attacks...Kithra Kyriel is described as a Horse Archer. Why doesn't he have a ranged attack?
 
These new changes look somewhat weaker than before, at least for archers...

kind of the opposite from what I was hoping to do with making this thread..
 
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