Realism Invictus

[sazhdapec]

Ugh, this event is godawful. It's already extremely polarizing. I don't think we need an even stronger bonus for its successful outcome. Just imagine an outcome of a random event from a random chance that is almost as strong as a great wonder.

 

[[Y]]

Ugh, this event is godawful. It's already extremely polarizing. I don't think we need an even stronger bonus for its successful outcome. Just imagine an outcome of a random event from a random chance that is almost as strong as a great wonder.

The suggestion as it is would only be half the current health bonus (+1 instead of +2), so actually weaker on that front. And a health bonus isn't anywhere near on par with a happiness bonus, which allows much more utility, especially early on. And being able to trade it means that more civs get to benefit from it, even if the event didn't happen to them.

 

[sazhdapec]

First, -1 to epidemics is probably stronger than additional +1. Second, a happiness bonus is temporary but a health bonus is permanent. Third, the ability to trade a resource means that it now gives . Stronger in my book.

 

[[Y]]

First, -1 to epidemics is probably stronger than additional +1. Second, a happiness bonus is temporary but a health bonus is permanent. Third, the ability to trade a resource means that it now gives . Stronger in my book.

More varied, and I guess a bit stronger. For what it's worth, I never found the actual event to be all that strong. It's very rare that cities are actually unhealthy, especially when they aren't surrounded by swamps, jungle, or flood plains (which this event doesn't target, maybe it should), so the bonus never amounted to much in my games. Moreso it was just a nice-to-have if the temporary unhappiness wasn't getting in the way of things, and being able to sell it for gold gives it some utility while allowing other civs to get the benefit (including possibly those that did spawn on jungles, flood plains, or swamps).

 

[arizzi]

Re - culture underpowered. What about tying culture to great person generation more directly?

 

[AllTheLand]

- Are civ placements at the start accounting for civ bonuses? I got a landlocked Transoxiana, that's quite cool to see happen.
- The halving of unit upgrade costs that was decided some time ago didn't make it into the SVN version. I'm putting this as a reminder for when Walter comes back, as I think it was an oversight considering it's a one-line change.
- The fractional trade route profit only matters if there are multiple trade routes that can add up (and perhaps also with protectionism by not being limited to even values), because the rest of the commerce points handling is not yet fractional.

That works fine enough as it is, and is presumably by design. Do you take issue with that balancing, or with the suggestion to make them more viable as a fighting unit relative to the warband? To me, it makes more sense that spearmen should be representing a significant fraction of the all-purpose infantry, but as it is they too expensive to be worth using that way.

Spearmen appear later than chariots, but I was mostly explaining why in my games I felt chariots were not a very interesting option. Militia are already a serious challenge for them.

So I think that the tweaks increasing the value of chariots are generally positive, although since they depend on a resource to be made, it's better if you can also make do without them.

I am on the fence about adding a medieval intermediate unit for now, and I can see how they'd be a severe nuisance. Generally speaking, I'd like light infantry in all ages to be a strictly support unit, not expected to form a bulk of the attacking force, and I'm not sure if an intermediary light infantry will bring anything new to the table in that regard.

I previously said that 4 Str. skirms were near useless for the most part of the medieval era (unless you had some extremely upgraded veterans). 3 Str. skirms will become obsolete by late classical and serve purely as a way to give recon aid. It's much better balance for the antiquity and early classical era, and playing so far I like the change to 3 Str. skirms, but an intermediate step would be useful.

3 Str. Skirmishers are now losing to Warbands when defending a forest tile. I prefer the current balance with 3 Str. instead of 4 (4 Str. was way too dominant when initially available), but I think they should probably get some defense bonus for rough terrains, not just attacking bonuses. Also, different civs have different kinds of specialized skirms. With 3 Str. for skirms, civs that have skirms without any bonus in forests are probably going to suffer more than others from this change.

Are you serious right now? Are you really talking about lances, which practically defined the Western heavy cavalry and were an absolutely devastating weapon on the battlefield (and which obviously inspired their tournament counterparts)? There was nothing more deadly in medieval warfare than a lance charge.

Popular imagination has knights with swords instead of lances. One of many misconceptions.

SVN doesn't work nicely with my setup, so I'm eagerly awaiting to hear what everyone else has to say about the ancient era power changes.

Personally I like it so far. Attacks on cities have got somewhat easier when faced with the new weaker archers, but I think it's mostly fine. I prefer that to archers on hill-cities being too strong.

I don't think Warbands are too strong after the changes to other units, their complete lack of special bonus is felt and units with similar strength and special bonuses start appearing after them.

First strikes help archers out here too, of course

I think that's more than a footnote, because first strikes are what can make taking a city defended by archers so costly. Against Warbands, if you throw a few units in suicide attacks, it's going to work, but an archer can have a lot of first strikes meaning it can kill multiple units before being severely wounded. With the tradition they have a 2 first attacks advantage over other defenders, and they can reach obnoxious numbers of first strikes much more easily.

3. Archers, having less strength, contribute less to your civ strength score, making you more of a target.

Isn't the strength score using the "soldiers" value of units, rather than looking at any other metric?

I know that for example, many buildings, including economic buildings, give a score that's being added up for the military strength estimate (I have been looking to improve the estimate so I already had a first look at that part).

So I believe that's not an issue.

The second will cost an additional 110%, the third 120%, etc. And this is with axemen running amock, so converting to composite bowmen is a pretty immediate priority. If so far you've been defending with warbands, however, then there's absolutely no additional costs for that first composite archer, allowing you to stock your cities with composites very fast. And this to me is the tie breaker that makes 3-strength archers not worth building. Archers might be slightly better than warbands, but composites are leagues better than both, and defending with warbands gets them out in less time than if you were defending with archers.

This is very true, but I think that with the change to unit upgrade costs that Walter has already said he will do, this becomes a lesser concern. I would disband old archers that lack the tradition or don't even have the first promo, but otherwise going into the weaker archers first and the upgrading them could become viable for human players, as the economical drain is going to be more reasonable.

 

[rbNEXUS6]

I never get anywhere near Future Tech, so I don't have a leg in this race, but I imagine a game that's gotten that far should be in a "wrapping up" phase, and future tech "break[ing] the game" is a good thing in getting it moving towards the end.

See, my goal is never to just "win", I want to keep the game going competitively as long into the Grim Darkness Of The Far Future as possible. Of course I don't think I've gotten to Modern Era from Ancient since in the 2000s, so

 

[AspiringScholar]

Hey, I intend to reply in depth to several comments above and have some additional feedback from this game, but wanted in the meantime to bring attention to what I believe is a bug, as I was able to replicate a crash which comes rather early for MAF errors on a standard map. My first thought is that perhaps somehow the fix to the Royal Marines' soundbite might be breaking something? I only have the auto save from a few turns before, but it seems that when the first Royal Marine is finished training in London, a crash ensues (or some other event particular to either that turn or the turn before causes it). While I wanted to play a late game gambit like I usually do, this might give me an excuse to update the SVN and playtest the ancient combat changes, and not have to go through the rest of the game with broken ranged attack.

Here's the save. I want to say that the crash occurs actually the turn before the first Royal Marine is created (but can't easily go back and check due to the long loading delay), so that may not be it, but as I was able to replicate the crash, something must be broken in the save. (It looks like it managed to successfully auto-save the turn of the crash, as well, so I've included that second additionally.)

 

[TheBirdMan]

I agree archer might need to have stronger bonus. I think 2 strength is good, but it should get 100% city defense instead of 75%.

In version 3.61 I see the the city defense for a default archer is 50%. With that in mind I think 75% would do fine. What could be changed is, that the passive City_Defense could be raised for Palisades and Walls instead. Such a change would give the defender some more turns to reinforce the city's defenses with more manpower before Siege_engines have nullified the passive defenses of the city*). Right now I'm using most of Y's suggestions in a game - but I have not made any of the above changes to this game as I don't want to restart the game. Not yet that is.

However - I have made changes to compensate the Skirmishers. I have not used same value for all different type of Skirmishers, so I have just "bolded" the places, where I have made different changes.

Spoiler Places where the Skirmishers can be compensated for a lower overall strength :

<TerrainAttacks/>
<TerrainDefenses/>
<FeatureAttacks>
<FeatureAttack>
<FeatureType>FEATURE_FOREST</FeatureType>
<iFeatureAttack>50</iFeatureAttack>
</FeatureAttack>
</FeatureAttacks>
<FeatureDefenses/>
<UnitClassAttackMods>
<UnitClassAttackMod>
<UnitClassType>UNITCLASS_WAR_ELEPHANT</UnitClassType>
<iUnitClassMod>100</iUnitClassMod>
</UnitClassAttackMod>
</UnitClassAttackMods>
<UnitClassDefenseMods/> (no changes here - not yet)
<UnitCombatAttackMods>
<UnitCombatAttackMod>
<UnitCombatType>UNITCOMBAT_MELEE</UnitCombatType>
<iUnitCombatMod>50</iUnitCombatMod>
</UnitCombatAttackMod>
</UnitCombatAttackMods>
<UnitCombatDefenseMods/> (no changes here - not yet)

In general, I have given Skirmishers better opportunities to defend themselves in forests, jungles, in scrubs, and partially on savanna. All places with more or less dense vegetation.


*) Edit: The Barbarians would - hopefully - also find it more difficult to conquer a city if it had a little better passive protection. It's actually a problem for my "dear AIs" in my games. They lose their cities to the Barbarians too easily at the start of a game (say first 100-300 turns or so).

 

[Drakarska]

Is there any way that Future Tech could (or should) be changed? Even if the tech cost is very high, it seems like having a permanent stacking increase in health and happiness would break the game over a long enough timeline. What would really work well is if each iteration of "discovering" the tech could start a Golden Age, or provide a Great Person, or unlock a temporary building or national wonder that could boost some stat for a limited time and then be re-built with each unlock. Any thoughts?

I disagree with this. In my FE games, the health bonus is a huge benefit, especially with high pop cities. Even if the player founds any of the food corps, the additional health is essential if your running a conquest games. Additionally, if the player is in this stage of the game, having bonus GA's or GP's is kind of redundant, as your already stacking GA's and GP's.
As for unlocking a temporary building, then re-unlocking it again when you gain another FE tech doesn't really bring anything to the table IMO. RI, tech wise, usually stops about the 1980's. I'm kind of ok with the tech stopping at that point, and just throwing down with the AI with that era of techs. I've lost count of how many times the AI has surprised me with a well coordinated carrier/amphib op on one of my weaker defended coastal borders.
I also play a few other mods that actually have a good FE tech path, as well as fun units to mess around with. Just my 2 on your thoughts.

 

[Walter Hawkwood]

Another random suggestion: Shouldn't Local Autonomy give at least a modest reduction bonus to Separatism?

"You will be permitted to administer your town under your own laws as you see fit. What would you like to do?"

"Free us from Ourselves!"

It indirectly does, by making them hate you less when it's the case. But if they are already plotting to break free from you, then "thanks for removing direct oversight on us, it'll make it so much easier to organize a rebellion against you!". Since we're talking about ancient eras specifically, I'd say broader autonomy actually made it easier to break away - it's not "giving in to the people's demands" as there is no concept of a nation-state yet, but rather "allowing a local lord freer rein", which, depending on their personal views, may well be a recipe for them breaking away.

By the way, the chariot(4) can be moved to roadbuilding

Technically you're right, as chariots should come later in the tech tree, but they are already not relevant enough compared to how they were IRL. This might be an ok change if paired with raising their strength to 5...

I don't think it's a RI issue, but when a city wants to join your civ after a culture flip, you only have two choices: accept or disband. It would be nice to have the "Examine the city" option before making the choice, like after a military conquest.

I'm not sure one can even influence these popups directly.

i have a question - why "mass production" military doctrine doesnt apply to air units? they arent hand-made after all
also -50% to cost of upgrade isnt too big? with progresive trait you get -100% (free upgrade) what is a bit overpowered for me

All doctrines generally focus on one line of units. There are no air-specific doctrines, and I might actually add something for that, but overall they are deliberately limited in scope.

Have you verified that upgrades actually become free? Many modifiers are capped at some level to never reach 100%. I don't recall off the top of my head if that's the case with upgrade costs, though. If it isn't, total modifiers should be capped at something like -90%.

Aristocracy need to be reworked somehow since its old as Autocracy / Monarchy civics

Have my own plans for Aristocracy. Will redesign. Might not make it into 3.7.

i found a bug - if you build hydro plant in town, you cannot build gas plant in the same city - as long as hydro plant work

Already not the case in SVN, power plants were generally reworked.

Or a gas plant CONSUMES gas so if another city made a gas plant you can't make more gas plants.

And that is one of the consequences of said rework. Gas plants can generally be built everywhere provided you have enough gas.

Just some ideas concerning war weariness -

1. War weariness should affect military production more directly (a percentage malus in addition to the indirect penalty of unhappiness)? Currently doesn't matter if your or the AIs stacks get decimated, you can build a new one very quickly (unit cost scaling is in your favor)

That would basically make the losing civ lose more. Not necessarily a bad thing in all cases, but has to be kept in mind - do we really want to make wars more decisive that way?

2. Defending civs should have much less war weariness than an attacking civ. Maybe no war weariness.

3. War weariness should be primarily caused by units dying in combat, not battles fought.

Both of those are already majorly the case in vanilla and in RI as a consequence: https://www.civfanatics.com/civ4/strategy/game-mechanics/war-weariness-mechanics/ (requests to add things that are already there are my favourite kind of requests - fulfilling them is as quick as writing an answer!)

On a separate note. This idea isn't fully baked, but maybe republic should offer some extra experience to units built, to better match a more aggressive civ's likely more experienced army.

I believe it already used to several versions ago. An ok idea per se, but with the recent buff I don't feel republics need any additional ones.

Hi, very weird bug here. Game was working fine until a few days ago.

Now whenever I try starting a new custom game, I can't select any of the mod new civs (Venetian, Ukranian, Israel, etc). Neither their leaders or their civs appear in the scroll menu.


I have tried reinstalling but still nothing. Anyone has a clue as to why

What would have been weird if you'd be able to select the civs you listed in the first place. They aren't supposed to be playable.

What's wrong with taking out a neighbor before iron working? The AI does it sometimes too. In any case, I don't think giving the AI more starting units makes them better defensively since they typically just use the extra units to expand more, with 1 or 2 units defending each city. This can actually make them easier to conquer since the defenses are light, and the gold reward for conquering one of these lightly defended cities pays for further conquering.

Nothing wrong, and as I indicated it was already well possible before the balance changes. But I don't want something to become a no-brainer that people do 100% of the time.

For what it's worth, I imagine this skirmisher having the same diminishing bonuses other lines get. So it might be a 5-strength, 2 speed unit, but probably only 25% attack against melee. Enough for them to go toe-to-toe with concurrent units while exploring, but not enough for them to dominate in the way the 4-strength skirmisher used to dominate. Basically, a viable exploring/recon aid unit during medieval (and maybe late classical) that's less effective than a horse archer or horseman, but available to civs that don't have access to horses. It would also provide 5-strength recon aid for civs that don't specifically have horse archers, which are currently the only unit to provide recon aid with strength greater than 3 until explorer. Though maybe Horsemen should provide recon aid instead of mobility aid (I'm still on 3.61, so maybe that's already the case and I just don't know it )

Even without any additional defensive bonuses, a 5-str unit in a forest defends as 7.5, which is more than a medieval swordsman, and just under a pikeman or man-at-arms. I can see how a 2-move unit like that would be a mighty nuisance to get rid of once it's in your territory (cavalry units are stronger, but they don't get any defensive bonuses ever so dislodging them is generally not a chore).

Is there any way that Future Tech could (or should) be changed? Even if the tech cost is very high, it seems like having a permanent stacking increase in health and happiness would break the game over a long enough timeline. What would really work well is if each iteration of "discovering" the tech could start a Golden Age, or provide a Great Person, or unlock a temporary building or national wonder that could boost some stat for a limited time and then be re-built with each unlock. Any thoughts?

A long enough timeline is not intended to be played. The mod has a definite scope and is set to end at the end of XX century, one way or another. If anyone chooses to play further, without any relevant content, that's on them, but I don't feel I need to review the post-end mechanics.

I agree archer might need to have stronger bonus. I think 2 strength is good, but it should get 100% city defense instead of 75%.

That actually sounds reasonable.

Thought: What if the event that allows you to take temporary unhappiness in your cities for a chance at extra health, instead of providing a global modifier, provided you with two instances of a +1, -1% epidemics Herbal Medicines resource, which you could then trade? Basically a health version of the Glasswork.

I'll probably just nerf this event into the ground or disable it if I ever get to reworking the events. It feels really out of place - as if someone had a whole different concept for events at the start, made this single event and then went into a completely different direction. There are literally no other events with the same kind of risk/reward balance.

- Are civ placements at the start accounting for civ bonuses? I got a landlocked Transoxiana, that's quite cool to see happen.

Unfortunately, no, and the way starting spots work in Civ 4, it is almost impossible to implement.

- The halving of unit upgrade costs that was decided some time ago didn't make it into the SVN version. I'm putting this as a reminder for when Walter comes back, as I think it was an oversight considering it's a one-line change.

It made it into SVN a long time ago, rev. 5432 to be precise. See CvUnit.cpp, CvUnit::upgradePrice, starting at line 8312

- The fractional trade route profit only matters if there are multiple trade routes that can add up (and perhaps also with protectionism by not being limited to even values), because the rest of the commerce points handling is not yet fractional.

Are you sure? I was under the impression total commerce was always fractional.

3 Str. Skirmishers are now losing to Warbands when defending a forest tile. I prefer the current balance with 3 Str. instead of 4 (4 Str. was way too dominant when initially available), but I think they should probably get some defense bonus for rough terrains, not just attacking bonuses. Also, different civs have different kinds of specialized skirms. With 3 Str. for skirms, civs that have skirms without any bonus in forests are probably going to suffer more than others from this change.

Makes sense. Scouts get those too, after all.

Popular imagination has knights with swords instead of lances. One of many misconceptions.

Yup. In reality, a sword would likely not even be the second weapon of choice in most situations for a knight.

Isn't the strength score using the "soldiers" value of units, rather than looking at any other metric?

I know that for example, many buildings, including economic buildings, give a score that's being added up for the military strength estimate (I have been looking to improve the estimate so I already had a first look at that part).

So I believe that's not an issue.

It's using "Power", which is separate from strength (though it usually roughly corresponds to it), which I didn't change for archers, as their utility in the intended role (city defence) didn't decrease all that much, especially if we go with +100% instead of +75%, so one's total power rating for AI purposes didn't change at all with that revision.

See, my goal is never to just "win", I want to keep the game going competitively as long into the Grim Darkness Of The Far Future as possible. Of course I don't think I've gotten to Modern Era from Ancient since in the 2000s, so

Grim Darkness Of The Far Future is most definitely beyond RI's scope.

Here's the save. I want to say that the crash occurs actually the turn before the first Royal Marine is created (but can't easily go back and check due to the long loading delay), so that may not be it, but as I was able to replicate the crash, something must be broken in the save. (It looks like it managed to successfully auto-save the turn of the crash, as well, so I've included that second additionally.)

You just committed the cardinal sin of not reporting the revision number.

 

[TheBirdMan]

Cities directly bordering freshwater lakes should enable (some of) the buildings that boost the exploitation of coastal tiles. My RI Planet Generator map has multiples freshwater lakes of 5-6 tiles. These are interesting features, but there should be ways to make them somewhat useful.

If the city is a waterbuilding (<bWater>1</bWater>) then it's just to set a lower size for the lake. Guess the default for most - if not all - waterbuildings are 8 <iMinAreaSize>8</iMinAreaSize>. Personally I have a value of 2 for the Docks, 100 for the Harbors, 500 for the Shipyards and Drydock and 2000 for Industrial Shipyards.

I have choosen those values because I say, that making a small dock with a hut for a canoe or 2 - something like that in a small city with only a couple of houses or so near a little lake - that can't be that unusual. Therefore 2 watertiles.
Harbors - well... I play on very big maps with lots of lakes and large sea, so.... 100 watertiles couldn't be that wrong I guess. That is my setting here.
As for Shipyards and forward. I have decided that I want a correlation between ship types (production time and cost) and sea areas that they will serve. For example, I do not want that the AI should be able to build an aircraft carrier if the "available" sea-area "only" is 1,000-1,500 tiles. However it would more than fine for a wodden Frigate.

 

[TheBirdMan]

Cities bordering freshwater lakes should not be able to build the Great Arsenal. In my game, the Aztecs built the Great Arsenal in a city that was bordering such a lake but with no direct or indirect access to the sea and no ability to produce ships.

Grand Arsenal is a seaside building, but it also have <iMinAreaSize>-1</iMinAreaSize> which is normal for land-buildings. Guess this is the "problem" here.

 

[Anchises]

I have made changes to compensate the Skirmishers.

Just a suggestion, but could a small Withdrawal chance potentially compensate Skirmishers for the reduction in strength better than larger defensive bonuses?

After all, wasn't the skirmisher's main role in ancient armies just to soften up the enemy and then retreat, rather than being decisive on their own?

It always seemed to me that Skirmishers realistically should be somewhat vulnerable on their own, but useful when supporting other heavier troops in mixed stacks...

 

[AllTheLand]

It made it into SVN a long time ago, rev. 5432 to be precise. See CvUnit.cpp, CvUnit::upgradePrice, starting at line 8312

I didn't remember seeing it in the patch notes, and when I wanted to check for it, I forgot that since you still support disabling unit cost-scaling, you had to do it in code to only change the behaviour when unit cost-scaling is on. So I looked up the value in GlobalDefinesAlt.xml, which had not changed at 2 gold per hammer. I guess I still found upgrade prices somewhat high even after the halving.

Now I see the change:

if (!(GC.getGameINLINE().isOption(GAMEOPTION_NO_UNIT_COST_SCALING)))
    {
        iPrice /= 2;
    }

EDIT: With unit cost-scaling active, upgrading a 4 Str. warband that costs me 54 hammers into a 6 Str. swordsman that costs me 104 hammers is requiring 60 gold instead of 50 gold at the expected 1 gold per hammer (base 2, halved with unit cost-scaling). Any idea where the extra 20% might be coming from?

Are you sure? I was under the impression total commerce was always fractional.

Yes, I am sure. I had an early situation with 10 other commerce points in the capital, 80% science and a trade route giving 1.25 (1 base + 25% for connection with the capital). The total science number was 8.80 (80% of 11) instead of 9 (80% of 11.25).

You should be able to replicate this result easily.

That would basically make the losing civ lose more. Not necessarily a bad thing in all cases, but has to be kept in mind - do we really want to make wars more decisive that way?

Since war weariness is mostly accrued during offensive wars, or when defending previously conquered land that we still don't control culturally, the idea would be tempting (people not being willing to go in the army to go die far away). The side suffering more from war weariness is not necessarily the losing side, it can be the winning side in a war of conquest. So there is some potential in the idea, I think.

However I agree that without further changes, it would be dangerous for balance, as war weariness accrued defending a border land could also prevent properly defending core cities after losing the border land. And there is no way for the side suffering war exhaustion to force a peace, or to lower war weariness by offering reasonable peace proposals.

especially if we go with +100% instead of +75%, so one's total power rating for AI purposes didn't change at all with that revision.

I think +100% city defense would be good for 2 Str. archers.

I'm happy that cities on hills are less obnoxious to attack now, but 2 Str. archers defending cities on the flat are slightly too weak.

 

[Walter Hawkwood]

Just a suggestion, but could a small Withdrawal chance potentially compensate Skirmishers for the reduction in strength better than larger defensive bonuses?

After all, wasn't the skirmisher's main role in ancient armies just to soften up the enemy and then retreat, rather than being decisive on their own?

It always seemed to me that Skirmishers realistically should be somewhat vulnerable on their own, but useful when supporting other heavier troops in mixed stacks...

They already have it. One thing that they logically should have and currently lack though, is first strikes - and that is what I think I'll add instead of defensive boni. I agree with you that they are light infantry and, therefore, shouldn't really be good at defending.

Yes, I am sure. I had an early situation with 10 other commerce points in the capital, 80% science and a trade route giving 1.25 (1 base + 25% for connection with the capital). The total science number was 8.80 (80% of 11) instead of 9 (80% of 11.25).

OK, I'll change this too then - I was sure that the only bit where commerce was integers was the trade routes, but if that's how it is, I'll just propagate this change to all commerce.

However I agree that without further changes, it would be dangerous for balance, as war weariness accrued defending a border land could also prevent properly defending core cities after losing the border land. And there is no way for the side suffering war exhaustion to force a peace, or to lower war weariness by offering reasonable peace proposals.

One thing that reminds me of is that it'd definitely be a good thing to have the WW number displayed on the main screen somewhere. Hiding it from the players was a baffling design decision in vanilla.

I'm happy that cities on hills are less obnoxious to attack now, but 2 Str. archers defending cities on the flat are slightly too weak.

Well, archers are a rather short-lived unit anyway, as Iron Working isn't that far away on the tech tree, so it'll still be obnoxious for most of the game . 100% it is then.

 

[AspiringScholar]

You just committed the cardinal sin of not reporting the revision number.

Oh, I took it as implicit that I hadn't updated since my last post was concerning the same game where I specified that: 5430.

 

[Walter Hawkwood]

Given how fast this thread is moving lately, that's probably something like 10 pages ago

 

[AllTheLand]

I agree with you that they are light infantry and, therefore, shouldn't really be good at defending.

On the flat, skirmishers are not very good at defending, but in a forest or other rough terrain they can be an absolute pest, as they can use the terrain much better than heavier troops. If you look at historical battles, small skirmishing units in woods on the side of the battlefield are a fairly common occurrence. For example, skirmishing units defended the Bois de Barry at Fontenoy. Skirmishers losing to Warbands when defending in a forest doesn't sit right with me.

One thing that reminds me of is that it'd definitely be a good thing to have the WW number displayed on the main screen somewhere. Hiding it from the players was a baffling design decision in vanilla.

It would definitively be nice to have it displayed.

What could be changed is, that the passive City_Defense could be raised for Palisades and Walls instead. Such a change would give the defender some more turns to reinforce the city's defenses with more manpower before Siege_engines have nullified the passive defenses of the city*).

I would also support slightly buffing palisades and walls. Palisades at 25% and being quite cheap don't seem so bad at first glance, but with the basic cultural defense being at 15% and them not adding up, it's often more a meager 10% boost, and making a full unit instead is usually better even if you get the full 25% boost.

City walls at 50% are more generally useful, but still not that impressive. The reduction of time needed by siege weapons to bring defenses down is perhaps the most important part of the defensive bonus, as the 50% has to be compared with the % from culture which will often be 30% (or on the way to soon be 30%) when you can afford to build walls in a city. When lacking limestone, the biggest reason to invest in them is not city defense, but the +1 happiness they offer with Autocracy (and later Monarchy).

One of the advantages of investing into walls should be reducing the need for garrison, so the investment doesn't provide benefits only when being attacked, but also by allowing to reduce ongoing expenses.

 

[Walter Hawkwood]

If you look at historical battles, small skirmishing units in woods on the side of the battlefield are a fairly common occurrence. For example, skirmishing units defended the Bois de Barry at Fontenoy. Skirmishers losing to Warbands when defending in a forest doesn't sit right with me.

When I was typing my previous post, I wanted to caveat that I was talking about the pre-gunpowder era. A skirmisher with a gun, especially a rifle, is absolutely a menace in rough terrain, and that is properly reflected in later units, I feel. But pre-gunpowder, a skirmisher is often a peasant with a sling or a javelin; in other words, not much different from the very same warband. While there were elite skirmishers (such as Thracian peltasts in Alexander's army), they were more of an exception than a norm, unlike the gunpowder era, where skirmishers were often better trained and equipped than line infantry. Anyway, a first strike should go quite some way to make them defend better in closer-call situations (first strikes are disproportionately more valuable when combat odds are close).

I would also support slightly buffing palisades and walls. Palisades at 25% and being quite cheap don't seem so bad at first glance, but with the basic cultural defense being at 15% and them not adding up, it's often more a meager 10% boost, and making a full unit instead is usually better even if you get the full 25% boost.

City walls at 50% are more generally useful, but still not that impressive. The reduction of time needed by siege weapons to bring defenses down is perhaps the most important part of the defensive bonus, as the 50% has to be compared with the % from culture which will often be 30% (or on the way to soon be 30%) when you can afford to build walls in a city. When lacking limestone, the biggest reason to invest in them is not city defense, but the +1 happiness they offer with Autocracy (and later Monarchy).

As you indicated yourself, comparing 50% with walls to 30% without is not fair, as walls also halve the siege efficiency. What you're really getting is 30% vs de facto 100%, at least pre-gunpowder (and even more starkly, at the next cultural level it's nominally 45% vs 50%, while in reality it's 45% vs 100% - so 55% difference rather than 5%!). Of course that only pertains to an actual siege, not the combat bonus, but attacking a city with intact walls before bringing them down, even at a +50% combat bonus, is almost always suicidal.