This would work as a Swedish modern UU, actually. There needs to be a special Anti-Tank Gun unit in one of the civs that can also act as a seperate AA unit, and what better than the civilization that gave us Bofors.
Should Rocket Artillery Need to Setup?
- Thread starter fromar
- Start date
This would work as a Swedish modern UU, actually. There needs to be a special Anti-Tank Gun unit in one of the civs that can also act as a seperate AA unit, and what better than the civilization that gave us Bofors.
This absolutely!
How I'd do it:
tank -> machine gun -> infantry -> "field gun" -> tank
air -> artillery -> ''field gun'' -> air
Air units get a bonus against units that are set up, thus against artillery. Artillery will obviously do high damage against ''field gun'' since it is basicly weak against anything but tank or air.
And this where the question in the OP comes back in. Rocket artillery will be more powerfull because it doesn't have to setup, and thus it isn't as weak against air as early artillery.
Also, you'd then have a basic formation too. Infantry on the first line, machine gun and ''field gun'' on the second line. Artillery on the third line. Air units in the nearest base, ready to strike where needed. Tanks on the sides, where they can more easily access holes in the enemy defense.
Upgrade to mechanized machine gunners? It's far from rare to have them mounted on different types of vehicles now.
Regarding the unit balance, I really liked Empire Earths model, where you basically have a rock/paper/scissor system in each main group of units (air, land, sea) and then limited interaction between them.
A system like that means you need all 2-3 parts (depending on if you need to cross water to get to your enemy) supporting each other. You need an airforce to bombard hostile land and navy units to soften them up (which will work fine now that combat between units will take a few turns) and protect your own forces from the enemy airforce, but they can't capture any cities or completely kill off any units (scale down damage done based on remaining HP of the target to achieve this) so you need a navy to clear out the remaining parts of the hostile navy to allow your invasion army to cross, and land units to clear out remaining enemy troops and take the cities.
EE balance modified for Civ:
Spoiler :
Other special cases:
IMO, the main problem with paratroopers isn't that they're weaker, it's the fact that by the time you get them you have other options that move so fast that you don't really get to the target faster anyway. Fix it by creating a modern version for them to upgrade to so they're not quite as weak as they are now and greatly increasing their range to maybe ~15 hexes and removing the need to have LOS on their drop site, but if there's a unit there they'll enter combat to the death with a significant combat penalty so that it's a risky move. Alternatively (or in addition to) the LOS requirement removal, add a spy plane with a good chance of avoiding detection (and thus not triggering an intercept at all, so they won't be used up) that can be sent to a specific area within range each turn to spy on it. (Fake edit: Actually, I guess spies could fill purpose and provide the LOS for a paradrop..)
Finally, they're air dropping using airplanes, so they should require an airbase (a city) to be able to use their special ability, but since you should be able to send several paratrooper groups at once, allow them to use it if they're within 1 hex from the city, but the drop range will still be based on distance from the city, and they should be able to move from city to city using those planes, just like any other air unit.
15 hexes may sound like a lot, but since they'd need to go from a city that's already a few hexes lost compared to the old system, and it would make them a weak unit that the enemy can easily counter by using machine guns, artillery or attack helicopters that counters even normal full strength infantry.
High production cost and a oil requirement would mean that they'd be useful as a rapid response force if a part of your territory need quick reinforcements, dropping in behind enemy lines and pillaging crucial resources (so place a unit there to defend it!) and for clearing a beachhead during an amphibious assault, but you'd still use regular infantry for the bulk of your infantry to keep costs down and strength up.
I'm not sure how to implement marines though, I don't see a role for them that isn't already filled by amphibious upgraded infantry. Maybe they could actually be a spec ops unit? I don't really think so, but...
They could be implemented as a scout upgrade, with 2-3 movement points with 3 LOS range, no terrain penalty, and the ability to helidrop x tiles away from anywhere (unlike paradropping planes, helicopters can land anywhere), useful for crossing water, mountains and other countries territory without declaring war. Since they'd represent only a very small squad rather then the significant portion of an army like regular units, they should have very low combat strength, but maybe have some limited ability to enter neutral territory too. Not really sure how to work that out though, maybe be able to stay hidden for 1 turn and then helidrop out/further in on the next turn, or hide if they're at least x hexes away from any hostile units, and give the regular scout a similar ability. It's probably better to just let spies deal with that though.
Regarding the actual topic title...if you want to use the set up condition for a combat boost, you could give the rocket artillery an extra movement point to compensate, but I'd rather just give bombers specific bonuses to artillery in that case, like pikemen get VS cavalry and AT guns get VS tanks.
Marines, I use in my game. They are good against tanks, but I also gave them amphib free promotion. I just felt that a marine units purpose is amphib, that's what they are known for. Just like paratroops paradrop.
It is the same for paratroopers. They have their abilities and so do marines. If I knew how to mod I would add a bunch of diverse aircraft units for the civs, diverse tanks, tank destroyers, self propelled artillery etc. I am still learning to mod though. See, I would have older units upgrade to newer ones the same as I did in Civ 4, it worked quite well, there was little unit congestion that way.
Why a special marine unit? Because I am playing till the Industrial era WW2, and I like them, that's why. I can then add a different upgrade to my units rather than expending it on amphib. Unless an earlier unit or two would need it. Not likely though in my game. Even if they did, it would not be more than two or three units to take a coastal area, to hold a temp beachhead. Later in the game, my marines will be doing some island hopping, so their free amphib promotion will come in handy. I am playing on a huge earth TSL map, as America.
You see it is ok to have an extra unit if it serves an important purpose. You can do it if you think its pretty cool too.
You see it is ok to have an extra unit if it serves an important purpose. You can do it if you think its pretty cool too.
Sure, if that's what you like, make a mod for it, that's what modding is for. But I would not like to see it ingame myself. It's just not a smooth transition for the amount of relevant millitary units you can build at any time.
Around classical era, you basicly have 6 relevant units (swordsmen, archer, catapult, spearmen, horsemen, ranged horse units). This does not increase during the medieval era, then in the rennaisance you actually have 4 (siege, cavalry, longswordsmen, musketmen, the last two are almost the same gameplaywise).
Then the modern era: infantry, paratroopers, tanks, anti-tankguns, aa guns, artillery, fighters, bombers, helicopters. That's a total of 9, not counting cruise missiles and nuclear weapons in which case it would be 12.
6->4->9/12 is already too much imo. It can easily be downed to 7 by merging infantry/paratroopers and anti-tankguns/aa guns. I think with some balancing it'd be much better for gameplay.
I would very much like to play that! The balance seems excellent that way.
Is perhaps a better name for ''Field Gun'', ''Battery''? Makes sense in my language, sortof, but perhaps not in English.
And perhaps the heat seeking missile launcher can be named RPG. It's a bit more inline with the simple unit names used in the game, again not sure if it makes sense.
I play standard with a 25 health mod, it does not increase damage. Even without any other adjustments (just increasing health to 25) it already plays much better, and most battles don't really last that much longer as you'd expect.
Again, I'd love to play your mod
True, if you'd want to perfect you'd probably have to create two new graphic models, but for gameplay it doesn't matter what they look like or how they are named.
Why? A simply a>b>c>a system is way less interesting then a more complex system where you get to decide which counter to bring in based on how well the enemy is prepared to deal with the potential counters trough support units and combined arms. I don't mind AA and AT being merged, they're specialist units that aren't strong enough atm, and merging paras with infantry would mean their combat strengths would be too close to each others, so the limitations to the paradrop promotion would have to be about as severe as now, or even worse, which means that they're still pointless. Having them as a separate unit allows for increasing the range massively while keeping the low combat strength, like in my suggestion, which opens up interesting strategical and tactical uses where you can send troops in behind enemy lines and have enemy troops dropped behind you rather then a simple and kinda boring 2 dimensional front.
I'm not against complexity. 12 units can work, hell, 24 units can work. As long as it is balanced and makes sense.
But you can't hugely increase the number of unittypes all of a sudden and expect it to work easily. It's not impossible to make it work gameplaywise, but it is hard. And IMO, the current modern era units are far from ideal, not even mentioning how the AI is coping...
So I think the easiest solution with the best result would be to merge said units. Especially since a new unittype is being introduced as well. It will makes thing less complex and thus it is easier to balance and the AI can handle it better. And IMO, it is still fairly well representing the modern era (in fact: still representing it in more detail than other eras).
See where I'm going? If you want a real paratroopers you can have it, but you must upgrade which means you are missing out on all normal promotions and thus your unit will be weaker than a non-paratroopers unit in it's era.
Unrelated: Company of Heroes is a perfect example of many units but preserving rock-paper-scissors. When CoH online was still running it was awesome
By the way, by making the paradrop consist of multible promotions you can easily balance it while still being able to drop it over a long distance. For example:
paradrop 1: range of 6, takes double damage on the turn you land and paradropping expends all moves.
paradrop 2: range of 8, take +50% damage on the turn you land, paradropping expends all moves.
paradrop 3: range of 10, take +50% damage on the turn you land, paradropping expends 1 move.
paradrop 4: range of 12, take no additional damage on the turn you land, paradropping expends 1 move.
paradrop 5: range of 14, take no additonal damage on the turn you land and paradropping does not cost any moves.
So hey, if you want long-range paratroopers that can move right after landing and take no additional damage when attacked during landing, you can have them. But then you will not have any other promotions and thus your paratrooper infantry is weaker in combat than normal infantry with the same amount of promotions.
paradrop 1: range of 6, takes double damage on the turn you land and paradropping expends all moves.
paradrop 2: range of 8, take +50% damage on the turn you land, paradropping expends all moves.
paradrop 3: range of 10, take +50% damage on the turn you land, paradropping expends 1 move.
paradrop 4: range of 12, take no additional damage on the turn you land, paradropping expends 1 move.
paradrop 5: range of 14, take no additonal damage on the turn you land and paradropping does not cost any moves.
So hey, if you want long-range paratroopers that can move right after landing and take no additional damage when attacked during landing, you can have them. But then you will not have any other promotions and thus your paratrooper infantry is weaker in combat than normal infantry with the same amount of promotions.
I would not want to see units merged that have two distinct purposes. I understand the Germans used a variation of the 88mm as an anti-tank weapon. Still in CiV both unit types should be available, you can't water down the game. That's been tried with CiV and it did not work. Obviously, the reason an expansion was needed. Also, you can't have infantry going around paradropping, it would not make sense. If you do not like the complication of modern wars in the game, then end your game at an earlier era where it is less complicated.
Why not? Personally, I have no issues at all going from the earlier eras and then adapt it to the new units in the modern era, and if the AI is having issues, they need to spend more time on it and improve it.
Look at the TW games. Sure, a human player will almost always be able to beat even a superior AI army if it isn't TOO superior, but it can deal with the many units in the ETW/NTW games, dealing with line, skirmish and melee infantry with cannons, howitzers, ranged and melee cavalry and so on, all mixing into the same army. It has issues, but it's dealing with a real time battle where you can place units exactly how ever you want, with much more terrain variation and protecting your flanks etc is very important. If an AI can deal with that in real time, then a AI in a turn based game that doesn't have to deal with most of those problems can do much better.
Even EE, where I took my combat system example from, has an AI that can deal with it pretty decently, despite spanning an even larger timeframe then Civ.
The AI will ALWAYS be at a disadvantage compared to a human player, but that's unavoidable, so dumbing down the game to help it is futile, unless you go to the locical conclusion and only have 1 type of building with 1 unit type, no variation at all in resources available for cities or how many cities each player has etc. If you remove all choice, the AI will be on equal footing, but since that is obviously a bad idea, the game should be designed to be good and then make sure the AI can cope with it well enough anyway.
Hmm, yeah, that could work, but that makes it even more complicated then having 2 separate units. 1 unit being meant for 1 thing and an another unit filling an another role is a much easier distinction to make then the distinction between which units of the same type should be speccing for para dropping and how far towards that spec they should go instead of increasing their combat strength, and effectively limits it to the most experienced units you have...which is a problem when it's a completely different path from what the old experienced units you've kept around since the start of the game would have taken, while being so close to the end of the game that you don't have time to get new units trained up for that.
Yeah sure Cyz, if you want simple modern warfare, there you go a mod right up your alley. This way the game can stay the same, even though it could use a few more WW2 unit types. Dive bomber for one.
I'd still prefer it if the game was changed, and AI with it. Then those who would like it can have a mod with paratroopers, marines, dive bombers, torpedo bombers etc.
I'll try that mod now Lord Olleus
I'd still prefer it if the game was changed, and AI with it. Then those who would like it can have a mod with paratroopers, marines, dive bombers, torpedo bombers etc.
I'll try that mod now Lord Olleus
I forgot about torpedo bombers, they should add them too.
All joking aside, I do agree and want the AI to change, that is a must, before anything else.Similar threads
