Ranged gunpowder units? (Infantry and tanks have 1 range!)

[Tomice]

My favourite Screenshot-Analyzer AriochIV has made this nice compilation:

http://well-of-souls.com/civ/civ5_units.html

As we can see, there are 3 types of units known so far having a ranged attack:

Siege units (need to "set up" to fire, no moving and shooting in the same turn)
Archers
Ships

I haven't seen any unit taking the role of archers after medieval times, which do you think these will be? Infantry, rifemen, tanks, gunships all lack bombardment capacity.

 

[Lillefix]

Well, thinking about it, there are really no units nowadays that has the archer role. Snipers perhaps.

 

[Schuesseled]

I pretty confident that the unit archer is basically considered an early siege weapon. And there is no archer type unit to fill throughout the techtree, no crossbows, potshooters, snipers, portable ion cannon.

 

[AriochIV]

I think Civ V defines ranged attacks as "indirect fire", which you can lob over the heads of friendly forces to hit the enemy. So I suspect Archers and Crossbowmen will be the first and last non-siege, non-naval units with ranged attacks.

I suppose an argument could be made for Tanks and AT-Guns to have ranged attacks, but indirect fire is not really what they were used for in real combat.

 

[Tomice]

@ Schuesseled: For a moment I thought the same, but crossbows are on one of the screens.

Practical combat ranges nowadays:
Assault Rifle 300m
Heavy machine guns, sniper up to 1km
Tank, anti-tank missile, machine cannon up to 3km
Artillery up to 50km

I wouldn't know whom to give bombardement capacity (besides arty)


@Arioch: won't this make archers unique, maybe even useful lategame?

 

[Mercade]

@Tomice: double thread, so I'll copy my answer into this one too.

It seems to me that archers have the role of siege units before there actually are siege units, so I don't think that any later unit is going to take over the role of archers as they have it in the very early game. Note also there it's not been mentioned anywhere that crossbows and longbows would have a ranged attack. For crossbows this makes sense. There are more a short/medium range precision weapon. Since longbows are the English unique unit, it could make sense if they also had the ranged attack ability as part of their uniqueness.

As to the fact that this means that arches have a longer range than tanks, I'd say this is an anomaly that is perfectly acceptable. Early catapults and trebuchets in reality also didn't have a range that would outclass a modern tank's range of several kilometers. Should a unit of archers survive to the modern era, I doubt it would do much damage when bombarding a tank (but let's not revisit the tank-v-spearman debate with the archers).

 

[Tomice]

We'll have to judge from the finished game if there is enough variety of units, ranged and melee. Hope this is no disappointment.

What about disallowing archers and catapults to bombard gunpowder units, or at least modern units?

Or we simply haven't seen any unit that takes the archer role? Even when snipers would be a stretch considering realism, they might be in the game.

 

[Mercade]

We'll have to judge from the finished game if there is enough variety of units, ranged and melee. Hope this is no disappointment.

What about disallowing archers and catapults to bombard gunpowder units, or at least modern units?

Or we simply haven't seen any unit that takes the archer role? Even when snipers would be a stretch considering realism, they might be in the game.

Disallowing archers to bombard modern units would work. That'd be a novelty, because thusfar every unit could attack every unit in normal land combat. However, in Civ4 the catapults became less effective in later games (halved damage or so), meaning they'd be pretty much useless trying to bombard a city at 1% at a time.

 

[AriochIV]

Ranged attack appears to work by pitting the Ranged Attack Strength against the target's melee strength, so I would not expect Archers to do significant damage against modern units. The number of units you can have is probably going to be sharply limited by cost, so I'm guessing that keeping archers around forever will not be cost effective.

Regular crossbowmen are in the game, and they appear to be the only regular medieval-era archery unit (longbowmen being a UU, and no other evidence in the tech tree for a replacement). I'd be very surprised if crossbowmen and longbowmen didn't have a ranged attack.

As for modern examples of non-artillery indirect fire units, a mortar team seems like an obvious possibility.

In the musket/rifle era, there was a clear trinity of infantry, cavalry and artillery. I don't expect there to be an archer-style indirect-fire infantry unit, because there wasn't really one historically.

 

[Tomice]

In the musket/rifle era, there was a clear trinity of infantry, cavalry and artillery. I don't expect there to be an archer-style indirect-fire infantry unit, because there wasn't really one historically.

Did you play Empire: Total War?

They had a huge variety of units from that era. Both infantry with increased range and some light, mobile artillery piece would fit into the role we need. The question is not so much if there was one in common use, if they want it gameplaywise, they can find something.

 

[Schuesseled]

Ranged attack appears to work by pitting the Ranged Attack Strength against the target's melee strength,

Umm no, it always says ranged attack X vs str 0.

Of course, if archers do any damage at all to modern units, i'd be unpleasantly suprised.

Regular crossbowmen are in the game, and they appear to be the only regular medieval-era archery unit (longbowmen being a UU, and no other evidence in the tech tree for a replacement). I'd be very surprised if crossbowmen and longbowmen didn't have a ranged attack.

I'd be very much obligied if you could post a screenshot of these elusive unit whom i have not seen for myself. Link it or it didn't happen

 

[Tomice]

I'd be very much obligied if you could post a screenshot of these elusive unit whom i have not seen for myself. Link it or it didn't happen

I told you it's among the units on the homepage I linked! YOu can clearly see them...

 

[Schuesseled]

Thanks didnt see the link.

Anyways it's not neccesarily a crossbowman could be a:
--
Cho-Ko-Nue - Chinese Unique Unit
--
Last time i looked at the tech tree, im pretty sure machinery didnt have a crossbowman in it. Edit: at least its very hard to tell.


And where did this fiction come from:
--
Notes: Workers can now travel on water, so there are no more Work Boats. It's unclear whether a worker is still consumed when creating a Fishing Boats improvement (as in Civ IV).
--
And the workboat can be seen on the techtree to the left of the trieme.

 

[grant2004]

Hmm... that's interesting. I guess the benefit of archers is that they don't require a turn to set up like catapults are said to, although they fire with less strength than artillery will. So they can be used more flexibly. I could imagine a mortar unit doing something like that in the modern era, or possibly the advantage to the rocket artilery unit (MRLS) is that it doesn't require that set up time and acts as a modern super-archer.

I could also see a possibilty for a specialized support unit, like an anti tank gun, or a flak gun to have a mortar team attached to it to make them more effective units. Without knowing the combat system it's hard to say of that would be overpowered or not.

Maybe by the time the modern era rolls around you're just expected to do your ranged bombardment with aircraft? If that's the case they might try to use aircraft eairler in the tech tree than Civ IV with either a biplane or a zepplin unit.

 

[12agnar0k]

Who said that a catapult would take a turn to set up.

 

[Tomice]

Who said that a catapult would take a turn to set up.

I have first heard about it on Ariochs page, so you have to ask him. I'm pretty sure he wouldn't put it there without reason, he seems very trustworthy to me.

Personally, I find 2 types of ranged units (with or without preparation time) a nice idea. Adds strategical choices to the game. Wonder if they keep this distinction later.

 

[Ahriman]

As I said all along, it is clear that they're intending "frontline" units to be able to attack only adjacent tiles, whether they have swords or rifles or tank shells; bombardment will be reserved for "support" units, either siege units or archer units.

It sounds like siege units take 1 movement point to set up before they can fire, so they can't move then shoot, not 1 full turn to set up.

I wouldn't be surprised if self-propelled artillery (the MRLS) acted more like archers than catapults (ie didn't have a setup time).

 

[AriochIV]

I think it's pretty safe to say this unit is not a Cho-ko-nu. Both the style of the armor and the style of the crossbow itself are very European.

Who said that a catapult would take a turn to set up.

This was said in one of the E3 interviews, but it's clearly demonstrated in the gameplay video. The trebuchet used its first movement point to set up, and its second to fire.

It's not clear that all siege units will work this way, but if I recall, the person being interviewed said it like that.

And the workboat can be seen on the techtree to the left of the trieme.

That icon could be a workboat, or it could be the land-unit-sea-transport. What use is a work boat when the worker can travel on water?

 

[civ_king]

or it might allow workers to turn to boats

 

[AriochIV]

or it might allow workers to turn to boats

That's what I mean, yes.