So the military combat in this game is based on panzer general, a game with far more hexes to maneuver than this one.
1. More moves for late era units is one bandage fix. Scouting doesn't match up. As you get into deeper eras, you go from moving 0-1 more tiles than you can see, to moving 3-7+ tiles beyond where you can see. Air recon is the only improvement, and only occurs once.
a. Air recon needs to scale. Say 8 sight at fighter, 12 at jet fighter.
b. Default sight needs to increase in later eras.
-Maybe later troops should have 3 sight.
-Perhaps forests and hills should 'cost' sight equal to their move penalty for the tiles behind them and/or the hill/forest elevation game expanded.
-Maybe at a certain tech level you can traverse mountains for 4 moves and they provide 1 increased sight to a unit on top of it.
-Maybe at a certain tech level the tiles shrink or split, say fertilizer, giving you more tiles to fight on.
2. Having ~10 unit armies is the way war is conducted, with unit costs initially cheap but increasing rapidly through the eras to ensure replacements are slow and costly, enforcing the upgrade system.
a. Upgrade dead end paths are deadly to the game. Consider a game where you're dominating with keshiks/horsearchers/chariots and have reached 15 promotions, as soon as you upgrade them to knight/cavalry you "lose" 6+ promotions and they are worthless. Further promotions, just to recoup loses, are unattainably expensive.
-Maybe the useless promotions should be removed and then the promotion level reset to the proper number for the basis of XP levelup costs that only includes the promotions that actually apply to the unit. Perhaps useless promotions consumed this way provide a fraction of their XP to the unit towards their next promotion.
-Maybe you should be able to choose what class you can upgrade the unit to, and remaining in the same combat role is cheaper.
-Maybe you could move a unit into a city and "splice" it, splitting the promotions onto 2 new units as you choose, one of the original type, one of the type the city is producing.
-Maybe a unit can fortify in a friendly city and 'retrain' promotions in a city with a high enough tier barracks/armory/military training building at the cost of X sleeping turns to reset a promotion, ranging from relatively quick to near-instantaneous based on how much military infrastructure there is.
-Maybe the promotions should be more universal / just transfer over, i.e. shock/accuracy rolled into 1, applying to ranged and melee combat in open field.
1. More moves for late era units is one bandage fix. Scouting doesn't match up. As you get into deeper eras, you go from moving 0-1 more tiles than you can see, to moving 3-7+ tiles beyond where you can see. Air recon is the only improvement, and only occurs once.
a. Air recon needs to scale. Say 8 sight at fighter, 12 at jet fighter.
b. Default sight needs to increase in later eras.
-Maybe later troops should have 3 sight.
-Perhaps forests and hills should 'cost' sight equal to their move penalty for the tiles behind them and/or the hill/forest elevation game expanded.
-Maybe at a certain tech level you can traverse mountains for 4 moves and they provide 1 increased sight to a unit on top of it.
-Maybe at a certain tech level the tiles shrink or split, say fertilizer, giving you more tiles to fight on.
2. Having ~10 unit armies is the way war is conducted, with unit costs initially cheap but increasing rapidly through the eras to ensure replacements are slow and costly, enforcing the upgrade system.
a. Upgrade dead end paths are deadly to the game. Consider a game where you're dominating with keshiks/horsearchers/chariots and have reached 15 promotions, as soon as you upgrade them to knight/cavalry you "lose" 6+ promotions and they are worthless. Further promotions, just to recoup loses, are unattainably expensive.
-Maybe the useless promotions should be removed and then the promotion level reset to the proper number for the basis of XP levelup costs that only includes the promotions that actually apply to the unit. Perhaps useless promotions consumed this way provide a fraction of their XP to the unit towards their next promotion.
-Maybe you should be able to choose what class you can upgrade the unit to, and remaining in the same combat role is cheaper.
-Maybe you could move a unit into a city and "splice" it, splitting the promotions onto 2 new units as you choose, one of the original type, one of the type the city is producing.
-Maybe a unit can fortify in a friendly city and 'retrain' promotions in a city with a high enough tier barracks/armory/military training building at the cost of X sleeping turns to reset a promotion, ranging from relatively quick to near-instantaneous based on how much military infrastructure there is.
-Maybe the promotions should be more universal / just transfer over, i.e. shock/accuracy rolled into 1, applying to ranged and melee combat in open field.
