Siege weapons are too unreallistic

screwtype said:
Anyhow, to tell the truth my biggest grudge against the game's lack of realism is not in the handling of artillery, but in the absurdly long time it takes to build and move combat units. Fortunately, that is something that can be rectified with modding, which I am in the process of doing.

I think the best remedy for that is with the game speed, not the units' movement speeds. Essentially, you get more turns to move rather than moving faster. I tried increasing speeds and it didn't work well, it wasn't unbearable but it created a lot of issues in early & mid game wars. It worked well in the late game so I've kept it with Infantry & later units. The production casts can go lower but if they're too low they all end up taking one turn to build and the cost difference is lost.

ZOC would be nice, I'd really like to see a system that only "activated" ZOC for units that were fortified (or sentry) so you could still walk right past an enemy that wasn't yet prepared.
 
Your experience must be a little different to mine then Seven because in my current mod I gave all the early units a substantial increase in speed, with Scouts getting 4 MP's and Warriors and other early combat units getting 3. And this has made the early game heaps more fun, with constant "suprise" raids by barbarians killing my worker units and so on. Now I have to protect my workers with fighters. And it's added in general a lot more excitement and dynamism to the game.

What I think will be harder is getting the movement balance right for later units. I think later generations of combat units should get bigger movement factors still to simulate better logistics, but I don't know how well that will work in practice. But I'm certainly encouraged by how well it's worked in the early game.
 
Seven05 said:
The production costs can go lower but if they're too low they all end up taking one turn to build

What's wrong with that? :) I've reduced all unit production costs by 75% and it seems to work pretty well.

Seven05 said:
...and the cost difference is lost.

You mean, it takes no longer to produce, say, a swordsman or a rifleman as it takes to produce a warrior?

I don't see what's intrinsically wrong with that. Once you have rifleman technology, you're unlikely to want to produce an earlier unit anyhow. And I think you should in general be able to churn out a unit every turn or two from a major city, given that most turns represent years or multiples of years.

The limitations on army size should be more to do with maintenance costs and, if possible, population, rather than time taken to produce them.

Seven05 said:
ZOC would be nice, I'd really like to see a system that only "activated" ZOC for units that were fortified (or sentry) so you could still walk right past an enemy that wasn't yet prepared.

That might be a nice touch. Personally, I'd just be happy to find a way to add ZOC to units.
 
The problem with a movement rate of 3 is that you could hide (say) Praetorians just outside the city borders of the first two or three cities of an opponent, and then instantly kill them in one turn. Not being able to respond to an attack is somewhat unbalancing...
 
IMO, I think the advantages would balance out with the disadvantages. Your own cities can get jumped too. And AI reinforcements can arrive quicker, and so on.

But admittedly I haven't fully playtested the changes yet...
 
Screwtype,

I think you are on the right track. I'm not sure if a ZOC will work on the scale, but I do agree more realistic will amke it better.

I also agree artillery is too powerful. I think artillery reducing the city defense is correct and well don. I think the problem is the collateral damage. Maybe instead of having crazy powerful artillery, we should give ALL units some collateral damage ability. That is, putting too many units together gives them a lack of mobility. Or reduce defense if there is 'overstacking', or some other mechanic.

I didn't mind 'suicide' catapults since seige equipment was always disbanded -- that is, ancient artilelry was always 'suicide'. (the Colossus was built out of Demetrius' seige equipment). I think the problem is that they do too much collateral damage.

So, ancient artillery really should be made only on the spot and always eliminated, should be very important against strongholds. Some other tactic should prvent overstacking. 'Real life' would be putting in food restrictions and disease -- here we have to use them or find another solution.

Best wishes,

Beunor
 
I agree... but:

Armies don't consist of 3 little people fighting.
Cities don't pull resources from an exact ammount of space
War weariness doesn't always happen IRL
Spearmen don't kill tanks
It doesn't take a year for a platoon to make 1 attack
People in a platoon don't magically resurrect after 2 years of sitting idle in a city....


Another words... it's a game....
 
id like to see some changes in the seige engines too. i like that they can bombard the city defenses down to 0, i agree with that. i dont think they should make direct attacks against units though i think they should be more like the bombers in that aspect. you get a choice to either bombard city defense or city defenders. if you choose the defenders you can cause collateral damage but cant reduce them below half strength. to help balance this out the catapults should have no defense strength at all, canons maybe 1, artilery maybe 2. they also cannot bombard unless they are at sentry. that will require them to spend a turn to stop and set up before they can be used. they also wouldnt get a firt strike chance unless they were at sentry or fortified.
 
That would make them widely overpowered... having a unit at 50% str won't defend at all, it'd make them too good, it'd be like they are now but without the death that becomes of them when you do the collateral.
 
gimhalos said:
That would make them widely overpowered... having a unit at 50% str won't defend at all, it'd make them too good, it'd be like they are now but without the death that becomes of them when you do the collateral.
Since they can currently bombard units down to zero and take cities, It wouldn't make them overpowered. It would fix some of the big problem many people have with siege units.
 
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