Shouldn't latest era ranged unit be mortar crew instead of machine gun crew?

[SaMatra]

TSIA. And why machine guns have range of 1 compared to 2 of a bow? Machine gun can totally reach further than bow and times more accurately. As for mortar crew I'd even give them range of 3 to compensate for modern armor and mech infantry movement and to make it worth it to upgrade them.

 

[noto2]

Yeah they did the same thing in Civ5 and it was just as stupid then. Acken's mod fixed it by making all ranged units have a default range of 2 and he simply lowered the strength and ranged strength to compensate. Yet another example of why I'm still playing Civ5 and not 6, even though I have it. It takes time for the community to mod these games into an enjoyable state.

 

[MooFreaky]

It's simply a gameplay concept. While also reflecting the situation of different ages.
Bows were incredibly long ranged weapons compared to swords.
Machine guns are not incredibly long ranged compared to rifles. However, the range of 1 gives some element of suppressing fire that machine guns are capable of.

It's not supposed to be taken literally, it's just an abstract representation.

 

[bladex]

and also sucks how it's range gets reduced to 1!

 

[spfun]

The range decrease is pretty awful, it should be 2. I end up moving on from field cannon line completely due to this.

This is a gameplay issue, realism shouldn't even be a factor considering the overwhelming amount of unrealistic things in Civ 6.

 

[RealAntithesis]

Personally, I think all ranged units should have a range of 1 except for artillery / bombard type units, purely because it makes better sense in the context of the scale of the map. The advantage of ranged in this case would be they don't get hit back when attacking.

Except 1UPT would probably make ranged units a little useless, which would be an issue.

 

[narmox]

For me, the reduction in range changes their role from offensive to a more defensive role. I'm fine with that, makes other units become more important in later eras, while not rendering the ranged units completely obsolete.

 

[noto2]

It's simply a gameplay concept. While also reflecting the situation of different ages.
Bows were incredibly long ranged weapons compared to swords.
Machine guns are not incredibly long ranged compared to rifles. However, the range of 1 gives some element of suppressing fire that machine guns are capable of.

It's not supposed to be taken literally, it's just an abstract representation.

No one's talking about realism... let's not even bring that up, seriously. I'm just talking about game-play. There's absolutely no reason to make the upgraded unit of a bow have less range. You've got melee, ranged, mobile, and artillery, and anti-mobile. You can have these same unit categories in every era, there's no reason to change the range of ranged units in the modern era. It's a really stupid, face-palm thing to do. Try playing a modded game where that's fixed, it just makes so much more sense.

 

[NukeAJS]

Reducing all range to one is an interesting idea but I like being able to set up front lines and fire over that line.

I think a better solution to some of the combat logistics is to give melee units a movement of 2+. I say 2+ meaning they can move two tiles and have the option of attacking a third tile thereafter. Also, melee units would have two kinds of attacks -- aggressive and cautious. An agressive attack requires a unit to normally be able to move on the tile (meaning you can't use + movement rule) and deals extra damage (let's say +5). If it kills a unit, the melee unit moves onto the tile. This is basically how things work now but with a small incentive to occupy the enemy's tile (which is usually suicical, the coup de grace, or a de facto coup de grace meaning the enemy can't retaliate enough to kill the unit).

A cautious attack can always be used as long as there is any movement point left (includes the + move rule). It deals normal damage and killing a unit does not mean it occupies the previous tile. It still takes damage as it does currently. To me, this would make melee units useful while calvary units don't get nerfed. Ranged units are already good and fill their proper roles nicely. But yeah, machine guns should have 2 range ;p

 

[unpossible251]

Mmm, i think aircraft kind of take on the role of long range that the archery line nerfs. But then again, the AI is rubbish at running an air force.

I know! Lets all start complaining about the AI! Havent done that in a while

 

[TomKQT]

The question how is it possible that an archer can fire over 2 hexes, but a rifleman is a melee unit came with CivV. I liked to understand this concept that ranged units in CivV are units capable of firing in an arch OVER units. An archer is capable of shooting over friendly units and hit enemy units far away, but rifleman would simply hit the friendly units instead.
This concept was however broken in some of the CivV patches which added machineguns. Yes, they had range 1, but could easily be upgraded to 2 which did not correspond to my explanation and theory

I never liked the fact that crossbowman upgraded to gatling gun which reduced the range to 1. In fact I kept my crossbowmen for a loooong time (especially those precious ones with two attacks per round and +1 range) and upgraded only when they started to do too low damage.
I'm not happy that it works the same way in CivVI. There could be other choices for repacements of archers. Field gun was a good idea, but as the OP suggests, it should continue to mortar which still shoots in an arch and could have 2 range. Maybe machine gun can also be introduced with its special suppresion role and range 1, but it could be a special upgrade path (just like now we have light and heavy cavalry).

 

[4N4C0ND4]

At least in ciV gattling/machine guns were useful with the march promotion. They could get a beating, hit back then heal. In VI they can't do that and get one shoted way to easily after industrial.

 

[elitetroops]

The whole concept of ranged vs melee becomes silly in the later eras. Modern warfare is pretty much only ranged fire. Currently an archer has longer range than a machine gun, which has longer range than a tank...

 

[TomKQT]

The whole concept of ranged vs melee becomes silly in the later eras. Modern warfare is pretty much only ranged fire. Currently an archer has longer range than a machine gun, which has longer range than a tank...

It's a game so it's mostly for gameplay reasons.
But it at least should follow some pattern, for example as I said - ranged units use indirect fire (archers, artilery, bombards, canons, mortars etc.) and thus can shoot over other units to further tiles.
I don't care that a bow can fire at longer range than a modern rifle if it does much less damage because of the thousands years between them

 

[SaMatra]

Machine guns are not incredibly long ranged compared to rifles.

Realistically not at all, machine guns are long range weapon and more accurate than rifle due to longer barrel length.

 

[gunnergoz]

I'd like to see a mod where you have 2UPT and the 2nd unit would be the archer/ranged unit. So the combined unit could attack twice: once with reduced strength at range 2 and at near full combined strength at range 1 (melee.) This would acommodate machineguns and mortars in later eras. Tanks too could have supporting fire and modern tanks could fire at range 2 from the start. Of course, some might want to pair two melee units (a "corps" in VI terms) and you would have a stronger melee unit with no range 2 strength. Frankly, I don't know why this has never been implemented in Civ before because it makes a heck of a lot of sense - to me at least.

(As an aside: It might be hard to depict in the game but ranged fire should be able to inflict the equivalent of suppression, i.e. the temporary loss of combat power in the attacked unit. It might take some of the enemy's combat power away but depending upon veterancy, the unit might still survive substantial losses.)

 

[MooFreaky]

For me, the reduction in range changes their role from offensive to a more defensive role. I'm fine with that, makes other units become more important in later eras, while not rendering the ranged units completely obsolete.

Exactly this. The Machine Guns in Civ5 had the same ranged and melee strength, making them a blocking unit. They could hold a key choke point effectively, which is what the WW2 era machine guns were generally used for.

No one's talking about realism... let's not even bring that up, seriously. I'm just talking about game-play. There's absolutely no reason to make the upgraded unit of a bow have less range. You've got melee, ranged, mobile, and artillery, and anti-mobile. You can have these same unit categories in every era, there's no reason to change the range of ranged units in the modern era. It's a really stupid, face-palm thing to do. Try playing a modded game where that's fixed, it just makes so much more sense.

I actually said it wasn't realistic and that it is purely an abstraction. The idea is to show the machine gun as defensive unit. You might not like the concept and that's fine, but I think it makes perfect sense. The only reason that the machine gun was worthless is because humans will always benefit from being on the offensive, so you were better off having the more powerful melee units with ranged support. Which is why it is better to have a mass of Crossbowmen rather than upgrade them, even when they were doing almost no damage.

I feel that they would have been better off having mortars and such in the archer line, while the machine gun was a separate line (or have the option to pick which path you upgraded to?).

 

[dexters]

A bit picky and arbitrary tbh.

In people's imaginations, machine guns is much more prevalent as modern military units vis-a-vis archers. Mortar crews are more of a specialized unit.

Besides, archers with 2 tile range was never realistic. They only sort of make sense in the early game with archers in the city centre tile defending against attack .

The inflection point with machine guns is they become a point defense blocking unit because artillery do a much better job. In Civ5 you get 3 range artillery and in Civ6 you get ballons that give your bombard units +1 range.
So the role of machine guns is a bit different in the late game.

You also have aircraft in the late game that needs to find its niche. Keeping a bunch of peanut shooter archer upgrades with 2 range but nerfed ranged damage is just a waste of space.

 

[LDiCesare]

I've been keeping field cannons just for the range for a long time. Upgrading to machine guns is only to boost their defense, not very good.
I agree range 2 mortars would be much better.

 

[GhostSalsa]

Machine guns weren't replaced by mortars - they are still around! The M1919 was developed after WWI and is still killing people today. The only thing that changed was the development of competition - alternate ways to transport death to the enemy from long and short distances, that continue to provide asymmetrical workarounds around inconclusive symmetrical trench grinds. And the machine gun is used as a complement to one of those new vectors, the "dumb hard truck patrolling a city with guns on it"

In the Civ gameplay world, the range-1 machine gun works decently well as a member of the buffer zone around arty. It doesn't really need to be there, and I'd like to see an era in early modern where trenches actually came into play, but… arty is king and the rest is dressing