Rock Paper Scissors

[zarakand]

I've noticed that I never build swordsman or longswords, they come to late and between archers and spears I never really worry about the importance of swords.

Any interest in modding in the rock, paper, scissors style play from Civ IV? Here we could have swords/longswords get a bonus versus melee units, horse units getting a bonus against swords/longswords, and spears/pikes with a bonus against horses.

 

[Gamerwiz]

I thought it worked like this:

There's 4 categories of units, Archers, Swordsmen, Spearmen, Cavalry

Archers
Bonus against: Swordsmen
Weak against: Horsemen

Swordsmen
Bonus against: Spearmen
Weak against: Archers

Spearmen
Bonus against: Cavalry
Weak against: Swordsmen

Cavalry
Bonus against: Archers
Weak against: Spearmen

Every category has something it can counter, something that can counter it, and something that it is matched equally with, and each match has a decent logical justification.

Archers are able to take out standard infantry units as they advance, but since they are lightly armored and on foot are susceptible to cavalry charges. Spearmen have the advantage of early contact and due to their long polearms have a superior range to swordsmen, allowing them to better deal with the archer's preferred methodology of maintaining a distance.

Swordsmen are heavier than spearmen allowing them to shrug off spear attacks and once they've closed in they possess vastly superior close range weapons, better suited to on foot melee combat. They're better armored than archers allowing them some protection against cavalry but not the same level of protection that a spear would provide.

And spearmen are of course equipped with long spears that are excellent for skewering a cavalry charge.

 

[Tery Buster]

Actually, long range units should be weak to any kind of melee attacks, with takes them out of the play. Leaving Swords with bonus against spears, spears with bonus against horses, and horses with bonus against swords. Historical accurate and fun to play.

 

[Thalassicus]

I enjoy complex systems like rock-paper-scissors-lizard-spock. Here's what I do with combat units (see the combat roles thread for details):

Swords are rare high strength elite soldiers with these roles:

• Primary: city killing
• Primary: unit defense
• Secondary: unit killing

I used these numbers in vem:

07 Spear
12 Sword (172% of spear)
13 Sword vs City​

Firaxis chose this in G&K:

11 Spear
14 Sword (127% of spear)
​

It's obvious why you don't build swords in G&K. They have lots of disadvantages, and a single weak bonus:

• Only slightly stronger than spears
• Much weaker vs mounted
• Higher cost
• Higher tech... and more expensive in vanilla/G&K.
• Requires iron
• Impossible to know if swords are even an option until you research Iron Working.

I was extremely happy with the fine-tuned balance between units in Vem, so I'm tempted to go back to those numbers for Gem. However, Firaxis seems to want there to be less of a gap between ancient and medieval units. If we adapt to their higher ancient strength I'd keep the same strength ratios between units, but at higher numbers.

I'm thinking... 7:12 is the same as 10:18, the old numbers of pikes and longswords, so that might be a good place to start for spears-swords. Pikes and longswords would similarly get slightly higher numbers... probably 20% higher at 12:22.

 

[Stalker0]

I'm thinking... 7:12 is the same as 10:18, the old numbers of pikes and longswords, so that might be a good place to start for spears-swords. Pikes and longswords would similarly get slightly higher numbers... probably 20% higher at 12:22.

My problem isn't with spearmen and horseman, I think swords do fine in that arena. My problem is pikemen. Pikemen don't come that much later than swords in most games I play, and they are simply a superior unit but in strength and resource cost.

So I find I never need to build swords with pikes just down the corner.

 

[mystikx21]

[/LIST]
I used these numbers in vem:

07 Spear
12 Sword (172% of spear)
13 Sword vs City
14 Spear vs Mounted​

Firaxis chose this in G&K:

11 Spear
14 Sword (127% of spear)
22 Spear vs Mounted
​

It's obvious why you don't build swords in G&K. They have lots of disadvantages, and a single weak bonus:

I'm thinking... 7:12 is the same as 10:18, the old numbers of pikes and longswords, so that might be a good place to start for spears-swords. Pikes and longswords would similarly get slightly higher numbers... probably 20% higher at 12:22.

Just to clarify a couple points. This is as far as the numbers I've been working off of for looking at unit balances.
(Note, I'm ignoring promotions or fortification/flanking bonuses).
1) Spears were not 14 against mounted in VEM. They had a 50% bonus and a 25% defence bonus. So they were 13 on defence against mounted and 10.5 on offence versus mounted. What they were mostly was cheaper and iron free options to fill out a force until you had more iron, or levies, and situationally important against a horse-heavy/UU horse civ until you had pikes.

2) Spears are not 22 in GK vanilla versus mounted. GK only gives a 50% mounted advantage to spears and pikes, not 100% and (over) compensated by raising the values an extra 1-3 points. So in GK they have a 16.5 versus mounted. Still better than swords, but not an insane 8 gap, just a crazy 2.5 where they were almost even and where swords had some advantage on offence.

The real gap is of course the base ratio change, not the anti-horse ratio. I'm not sure I'd put it at 10-18 and 12-22, but 10-16 or 12/13-20/21 ought to be sufficient, with other presumed changes in city attack or defence promotions. As with Stalker, I don't think the problem for swords is so much spears but pikes being really quick after AND being a better unit overall. The change in spear/warrior ratio is another factor 6-7 to 8-11?.

Depends on how much the costs and upkeep change too.

 

[zarakand]

I'm glad to see that other people are interested in this idea as well. I'm looking forward to seeing what you decide to do in GEM. Personally, I'm not a huge fan of big base strength differences and more of a fan of bonuses against classes.

I feel like if you're lucky enough to get iron it should make a significant impact on your empire and give you troops that can whip the others pretty thoroughly. I guess, I'm thinking about Jared Diamond's fun (and a bit controversial) book Guns, Germs, and Steel.

The other area I'd like to see a change, is an additional reclassification of ships (leave the ranged and melee I love that!) into wooden and metal with metal ships getting huge bonuses against wooden kind of like pike with horses.

 

[Babri]

• I am currently finding some siege units have very high like trebuchets which would die in about 3-4 hits from a knight. On the other hand they die too easily from city attacks.
• Another observation is that land based ranged units are too much effective against naval units especially early naval units.
• Horsemen are quite weak as they loose to everything, swords are expensive to tech & build & thus useless & spears are overly useful.
• MI am currently finding some siege units have very high like trebuchets which would die in about 3-4 hits from a knight. On the other hand they die too easily from city attacks.
• Another observation is that land based ranged units are too much effective against naval units especially early naval units.
• Horsemen are quite weak as they loose to everything, swords are expensive to tech.

My suggestions :-

• Reduce spear strength to 10, give it 25% defence as in VEM.
• Reduce pikes strength to 14, give it 25% defence.
• Reduce Iron working tech cost, increase swords strength to 15, give it 10% bonus Vs cities.
• Increase horsemen strength to 14, give it bonus against siege units (25%).
• Give siege units a promo which gives them 50% resistance against ranged attacks. U need to get out of that city to destroy siege units. This would greatly help rush AI when fighting against human player.
• Reduce siege unit bonus against cities, make city attacks less deadlier overall & their strengths lowered so there is actually a point of creating swords.

 

[Tarquelne]

• I am currently finding some siege units have very high like trebuchets which would die in about 3-4 hits from a knight. On the other hand they die too easily from city attacks.

• 
  
  I agree with that: IME the way this works out is that my siege units can withstand an attack or two while operating, but AI siege units get picked-off by my city and (usually) another ranged attacker or two.
  
  

  [*]Another observation is that land based ranged units are too much effective against naval units especially early naval units.

  
  I don't agree with that, given how effective early ships are against land units,

 

[mystikx21]

My suggestions :-

• Reduce spear strength to 10, give it 25% defence as in VEM.
• Reduce pikes strength to 14, give it 25% defence.
• Reduce Iron working tech cost, increase swords strength to 15, give it 10% bonus Vs cities.
• Increase horsemen strength to 14, give it bonus against siege units (25%).
• Give siege units a promo which gives them 50% resistance against ranged attacks. U need to get out of that city to destroy siege units. This would greatly help rush AI when fighting against human player.
• Reduce siege unit bonus against cities, make city attacks less deadlier overall & their strengths lowered so there is actually a point of creating swords.

I second (most of) these. Numbers look about right.

I'm not sure I would lower siege strengths. They're pretty weak against non-city already. Their real problem is that the AI doesn't kill them fast enough while it's too easy for the human to kill them, not that they're too strong on attack relative to swords. If we give a +1 city attack bonus to swords, they'd be 16 and catapults would be 16, but swords have advantages in defence and mobility (as well as being better against everything other than the city). That ought to help the AI by giving it more options to attack a city with and do significant damage.

 

[Ahriman]

However, Firaxis seems to want there to be less of a gap between ancient and medieval units.

To me, the main effect they wanted to achieve was to make the gap between ancient and classical units larger, so that spears and swords and horsemen are *much* better than warriors and archers.

I think this is appropriate. A warrior should not be close in power to a spearman. You should be rewarded militarily for investing in military tech and real military units, and you should be punished (if you get in a war) for just trying to bull through economy techs with just warriors and archers. If you just have a few warriors and archers, you should get your teeth kicked in by someone packing swords and spears. In pre-G&K vanilla and even VEM it was arguably too easy to hold off spears and swords with warriors and archers.

The existence of the composite bowman unit also helps here, because pre-G&K vanilla archers had to stick around until crossbows with no upgrade, so they ended up being too strong in the early game. But now we can make a bigger gap between archers and swords without making archers too weak, because they have the upgrade opportunity.

I also wouldn't want to decrease the value of siege units vs cities. If an enemy brings up a catapult and sets it up outside your city in the early game, if you don't have an army you should expect to lose the city. 15-strength swordsmen would still have value in that they're good-vs-everything.

 

[rhammer640]

I also like the difference in g&k as ahriman mentioned above having the larger gap between warriors/spearman etc. I actually hated in vanilla when a warrior got promoted by camp to spearman cause changed the tech path and wasn't that much better.

 

[Dunkah]

I like the larger gap but don't like the ability to beeline to those techs.

So what you are saying is that if I beeline straight to knight and still haven't researched sailing that I should be able to field a "Super Unit"?

The design/concept of a knight comes from hundreds of years of history of fighting wars with all the other types of units before them squaring off time after time after time. Beelining breaks that cycle. So creates situations where it is totally unfair.

So either the gap needs to be closer or the abilty to beeline units out of era should be hampered somehow someway.

 

[Ahriman]

So what you are saying is that if I beeline straight to knight and still haven't researched sailing that I should be able to field a "Super Unit"?

Yes. Though remember of course that the tech cost of Chivalry is many, many times that of sailing. So by the time you're at a point where you can research chivalry in a reasonable amount of time, you could pick up sailing in 1-2 turns.

I assume that GEM will add in the VEM alterations that increased these even further by era. So medieval techs are going to cost waaay more than an ancient tech. So beelining can be very inefficient; it is a strategy with upsides and downsides.

If you want a realism argument; I think it is perfectly plausible that (say) a landlocked central Asian power like the Mongols would have developed excellent heavy cavalry before developing coastal sailing skills.

There are already some limits on beelining because of multiple tech prerequisites. VEM had several of these, and G&K added more than vanilla had; I assume GEM will include some of these too.

Once you remove things like the pre G&K vanilla great scientist mechanics that enabled really easy beelines with free techs, I don't really see much of a problem.

 

[Babri]

I don't agree with that, given how effective early ships are against land units,

I was talking about early ships like trireme which die to fast to ranged attacks & cannot do much harm to cities making them fairly useless.

I also wouldn't want to decrease the value of siege units vs cities. If an enemy brings up a catapult and sets it up outside your city in the early game, if you don't have an army you should expect to lose the city. 15-strength swordsmen would still have value in that they're good-vs-everything.

If u read my whole suggestion then u might understand why I suggested this. I said that siege units should be more resistant to ranged attacks, this might make them too powerful thats why nerfing their attack against cities.
This would have following benefits :-

• Dynamite tech will no longer be equal to pressing a 'u win' button. Since it will take more time to bring for artillery the city down. Not much but still that would make things more interesting.
• Early siege units like cats, trebs & cannons would actually get a chance to attack rather than get killed before deploying.
• City attacks nerfed generally while siege units melee combat strength nerfed so siege last longer. So the defender has to bring some units rather than rush-buying archer & use city attack + archer to pick one catapult every turn for example. Also siege units would be more susceptible to cavalry so infantry would instantly become more valueable as they perform better at holding ground. Right now the right tactic is attack with artillery & bring city to 0HP, then capture it with cavalry/tanks. This makes infantry seriously lacking on offense once u get 3 ranged units.

 

[Thalassicus]

Thank you for the corrections mystikx21. The vs-mounted part was not the main focus of what I was going for, anyway.

I assume that GEM will add in the VEM alterations that increased [tech costs] even further by era. So medieval techs are going to cost waaay more than an ancient tech. So beelining can be very inefficient; it is a strategy with upsides and downsides.

The main thing is the shared tech cost modifier. You probably know of this, so just for anyone unaware of it: in the base game techs get a small cost reduction when researched by other players. The mods make that reduction greater. Beelining means few people will have the tech we go for (so the techs have 100% cost), while taking a broader research path means the techs will cost less overall (down to 30-50% cost... I don't remember exactly, but it's much cheaper).

A warrior should not be close in power to a spearman. You should be rewarded militarily for investing in military tech and real military units, and you should be punished (if you get in a war) for just trying to bull through economy techs with just warriors and archers.

I agree with this in the classical era and beyond, but ancient era conquest is more challenging to balance:

• It requires less skill than later wars. We have fewer units, lower variety of units, less empire management to deal with, and our opponents are less developed.
• It has a disproportionate effect on the game, since progress in Civilization is exponential through time. Our small early gains amplify to big late advantages.

Massing spears+archers and swarming a capital is a very simple strategy to execute, can double our land area, and successful ancient conquest wins the game. It combines low skill and high reward into a balancing headache. I'm okay with conquering citystates, or ancient pillaging wars, but I do not want to be able to capture major-civ cities until we have classical era units. The early game should be much harder for conquerors like myself. It's one of the few things I feel very strongly about.

 

[Ahriman]

If u read my whole suggestion then u might understand why I suggested this. I said that siege units should be more resistant to ranged attacks, this might make them too powerful thats why nerfing their attack against cities.

I have no problem with making cats and trebs (and maybe cannon?)more resilient to ranged attacks from cities. But I don't see that this needs to weaken their anti-city attack strength. If necessary they could have even more of the flavor they did in VEM, with slightly reduced ranged attack but further boosted bonus vs cities.

Artillery are a different kettle of fish because of their 3-tile range, and because they are relatively more effective vs units. I wouldn't try to balance all siege units based on the performance of artillery. Artillery could arguably be made slightly less effective vs cities.

I think siege units are already quite susceptible to cavalry, and I wouldn't want to make them more susceptible. And sitting 3 tiles away and shooting the city while everything else hides out of range is only going to work if the enemy doesn't have an army (otherwise they're going to be throwing melee/mounted units at your arty).

The main thing is the shared tech cost modifier.

It seems to me that the shared tech modifier isn't the main issue here, it is the fact that tech per-tech costs increase dramatically as we move rightwards. VEM also had global tech cost multiplier increases for each era on the belief that tech progress in vanilla was too fast. Are these not going to be added back for GEM?
[I agree that the shared tech cost modifier is important for inefficiency, but it isn't the main thing that prevents beelines from being overwhelming.]

I agree with this for later eras, but not the ancient era. I dislike ancient era conquest for two reasons:

Swords aren't ancient era (they're classical, no?). So I don't think this is very relevant.
My point isn't about ancient era rushes. It the situation where you get to the classical era, but aren't getting military techs. If you're focused solely on getting economy techs and building up wonders/economy infrastructure (libraries, etc) then you should get beaten up by the game who does a balanced build that includes horseback riding or iron working and brings some real military units to the fight. Ancient era units should not be able to fight off classical era units.

You shouldn't be able to go ~8-10 techs in without getting some real military techs unless you are very isolated, or are willing to take a big risk in terms of being vulnerable to invasion.

With spearmen; I think spearmen should be much more powerful than warriors. They don't necessarily need to be massively more powerful offensively, though they should still have a significant advantage, but they need to be much better overall units because of the 25% defense bonus. I don't think the attack bonus warrior vs spear needs to be 6 vs 11 like in G&K, but I think it should be much larger than 6 vs 7 or 8. And an offensive swarming strategy with hoplites or immortals should be possible, or those are really weak UUs.
6 strength warriors vs strength 10 spearman with +25% vs horse +25% defense should probably work fine. That 6 strength warrior fortified on rough terrain is going to hold up fairly well to a strength 10 spearman attacking it.

I'd also say that capturing another capital in the early game isn't that amazing, because you're getting a city that is probably a long way away and is going to be a puppet, with all the puppet penalties (which I assume will transfer from VEM to GEM). If you wanted to expand a lot, you'd almost certainly be better off building settlers than you would building spears.

 

[mystikx21]

If u read my whole suggestion then u might understand why I suggested this. I said that siege units should be more resistant to ranged attacks, this might make them too powerful thats why nerfing their attack against cities.
This would have following benefits :-

• Dynamite tech will no longer be equal to pressing a 'u win' button. Since it will take more time to bring for artillery the city down. Not much but still that would make things more interesting.
• Early siege units like cats, trebs & cannons would actually get a chance to attack rather than get killed before deploying.
• City attacks nerfed generally while siege units melee combat strength nerfed so siege last longer. So the defender has to bring some units rather than rush-buying archer & use city attack + archer to pick one catapult every turn for example. Also siege units would be more susceptible to cavalry so infantry would instantly become more valueable as they perform better at holding ground. Right now the right tactic is attack with artillery & bring city to 0HP, then capture it with cavalry/tanks. This makes infantry seriously lacking on offense once u get 3 ranged units.

I'm not sure that they would be "too powerful". I think the problem right now is they're too weak (at least for the AI). Another possibility is to weaken the city's ranged attack value, though a cover type promotion helps against both the city and the archers.
If the problem is Artillery+, then the answer is to weaken Artillery and later, not to nerf the entire siege tree.
(Eg. What Ahriman said.).
Mobile units should probably just be slightly stronger (12 to 14 for example) rather than getting a special anti-siege weapon value.

 

[Thalassicus]

I'm updating my spreadsheets to prepare for the armies stage of GEM. Here's an interesting list comparing VEM unit strengths to G&K. Firaxis buffed units at the top, and nerfed units at the bottom:

Overall they buffed non-strategic units (warriors, pikes, muskets) more than strategic units (horses/iron). That makes swords less powerful like zarakand described in the original post. It also matches the feeling I got while playing the expansion.

This is one area where I differ with Firaxis:

• I like scarce strategic resources supplying powerful units. I think it's fun to fight with armies containing a powerful core of experienced strategic units, and cheap cannon fodder non-strategics as support. It's exciting and feels close to real world armies.
• Firaxis places abundant strategics supplying average units. This approach lets us mass just 1-2 unit types, instead of a mix, since the units are more similar and equally available.

To put it another way, in this specific circumstance I think Firaxis placed unit balance too far on the right of the scale below (similar units), so I will move things to the center for G&K Enhanced.

A warrior should not be close in power to a spearman. You should be rewarded militarily for investing in military tech and real military units, and you should be punished (if you get in a war) for just trying to bull through economy techs with just warriors and archers.

I agree with this in the classical era and beyond, but ancient era conquest is more challenging to balance:

Swords aren't ancient era (they're classical, no?). So I don't think this is very relevant.

I was responding to your comment about warrior-spearman balance, the ancient era units.

 

[Ahriman]

This is one area where I differ with Firaxis:
I like scarce strategic resources supplying powerful units. I think it's fun to fight with armies containing a powerful core of experienced strategic units, and cheap cannon fodder non-strategics as support. It's exciting and feels close to real world armies.
Firaxis places abundant strategics supplying average units. This approach lets us mass just 1-2 unit types, instead of a mix, since the units are more similar and equally available.

And this is why I could never play pre-G&K vanilla once VEM was available, and why I doubt I'll ever play G&K once GEM is available.

I was responding to your comment about warrior-spearman balance, the ancient era units.

Understood. But hopefully we can agree that with the defensive-bonus design, spears can still be dramatically better than warriors without making very early game rushes too damaging.