The biggest problems of current combat system

[Krajzen]

1) i like the idea of spearmen > pikemen > musketman. just makes more sense to me. (sidenote, i would make the Tercio a pikeman replacement (so comes with civil service) with the strength of a musketman).

Yeah, I would also greatly prefer it over pikemen -> lancer.

In the vanilla Civ5 pikemen upgraded to musketmen while lancers were standalone unit. But they were useless. So Firaxis decided on a brilliant move to link them with anti - mounted line so we have infantry upgrading into cavalry, field artillery and helicopters

It is awful to upgrade experienced medieval/ancient infantry to such useless cavalry unit, especially for Zulu, Persia and Celts.
On the other hand, it is awful for civs with Lancer units - Poland, Ottoman, Sweden - that they have to wait till atomic era (!!!) to upgrade their unique units.

2)for cavalry, i think horse > knight > cuirasseur > helicopters makes sense. cav can still sorta work as scouts/recon (which makes sense), but they are no longer front line troops. however, MUCH later you can upgrade them to "air cav" if you want... but i would make the upgrade cost even higher. essentially, you keep your cav around for 2 eras, but that doesnt make too much sense to me.

And what between cuirasseur and helicopters?

I would simply upgrade Cavalry to Landships. Armor units are usually considered as 'modern cavalry'.

3) anti tanks should be scrapped. theres no reason to have this unit. it doesnt make sense to have a division of anti tank guns. better left as a promotion.

The only reason to leave them would be IMHO to make them 2/3 range non direct fire ranged unit with high combat strenght (no bonus to cities). So they would be actually dangerous against tanks while remaining useful for other purposes.

5) however, range cav should be its own line. it makes no sense for all civs to have one unit at the beginning of the game and thats it. i think chariot archers should either be removed (for consistency) or be fleshed out to upgrade to the horse archer (no longer a hunnic unique) with construction (same tech as composite bowmen), which in turn should upgrade to a carabinier (current "cavalry" unit). but i think this should be the end of this unit line. similarly, i would make this line have a range of 1, but be able to move after attack. seems more justified to have the 1 range here, as the move after attack makes these units fill an ACTUAL role.

Well, for me it seems to be too complicated, the same as for the current anti cav line
Much better solution - I have even seen a mod like this - is a conversion of 'ranged cavalry' promotions into 'cavalry promotions'.

6) tanks. landship> armor (current tank) > Main Battle Tank
tanks should be new with the landships. they should have a higher strength then they do, have a special "armor plating" promotion that reduces damage taken from all types of infantry (ranged and melee... unless they have the "anti-tank" promotion, which negates "armor plating")

Cool idea.

9) cities: should have range of 3. (and a slightly reduced strength)
think about it. this way, you need to plan your sieges better if you dont want to lose your army. you bring melee units (good bombard defense) up first to absorb incoming fire. you follow up with archers that can still range attack cities from a distance (which makes sense... this is the major argument against archers being range-1 units IMO). you only bring up your vulnerable siege equipment after you have the situation under control. the final stage of the siege is archers AND siege units firing at the city while melee units wait for their chance to storm it.

I think it would be too much - the entire concept of city bombardment is strange and makes wars more static than they were in the history, shouldn't be buffed more.

 

[GAGA Extrem]

My two cents:
(1) Overpowered composite bowmen and crossbowmen:
As a defensive player, I build a lot of ranged units - they just seem way more powerful than melee, especially if you can control the terrain where you are fighting in.

(2) Strange anti - mounted upgrade line (Pikeman - Lancer - AT gun - Helicopter):
Another reason to never build spearmen or pikemen unless your enemy is swarming you with cavalry. Why, oh why?!

(3) Too weak tanks:
...or, the other way round: Bombers are way too powerful, rendering tanks more or less pointless.

 

[subtledoctor]

Man, this thread makes me miss Civ4. Do NOT mean to rehash the 1upt debate here; but 1 vs. 1, Civ4 (BTS) had great unit balance. (Sword > spear > horse > sword; rifle > cavalry > grenadier > rifle.) And because some unit always died in every battle, they had to be cheaper, meaning you could field a much more diverse army. Now, With fewer units to field, the devs seem to have felt the need to simplify unit classes. And clearly flailed to find a new way to represent archers' support role.

(Also I loved the exploit to give xbows first strike promotions and then upgrade them to infantry.)

 

[danaphanous]

My two cents:
(2) Strange anti - mounted upgrade line (Pikeman - Lancer - AT gun - Helicopter):
Another reason to never build spearmen or pikemen unless your enemy is swarming you with cavalry. Why, oh why?!

Yeah, I would also greatly prefer it over pikemen -> lancer.
It is awful to upgrade experienced medieval/ancient infantry to such useless cavalry unit, especially for Zulu, Persia and Celts.
On the other hand, it is awful for civs with Lancer units - Poland, Ottoman, Sweden - that they have to wait till atomic era (!!!) to upgrade their unique units.

Everyone on this thread DOES realize that if you ignore the lancer upgrade pikemen later have the option of becoming riflemen right? I sure hope if you've played Zulu you realized this, otherwise you totally screwed up your experienced impi army and all those ikanda upgrades. The rifleman push is one of the Zulu's most powerful as their riflemen are likewise way better than contemporaries due to ikanda. All those cover and flanking upgrades! Plus 3 movement! They just skip musketmen and make the two contemporaries for some reason--probably because the combat difference is not that large. I see the lancer line as just an option if you want it for some reason. The best use of it is landschnekt-->lancer-->helicopter...because it eliminates the pillage movement cost of helis and makes them into the monsters they should be for such a job. You can pillage 6-8 tiles a turn!

 

[meowschwitz]

Everyone on this thread DOES realize that if you ignore the lancer upgrade pikemen later have the option of becoming riflemen right? I sure hope if you've played Zulu you realized this, otherwise you totally screwed up your experienced impi army...they just skip musketmen and make the two contemporaries for some reason.

That's not true. The Impi are the only pikemen which upgrade to something else.

 

[danaphanous]

hmmm...I thought I just did it for another pikemen...I see I was mistaken then. But yes, not the impi...that's what I was remembering. Thanks. I looked it up. Here's the BNW chart and the rifleman option is just for UU (grey lines are UU only, dotted are ruin upgrade options):

Spoiler :

 

[meowschwitz]

I voted composites but I think the biggest problem with CiV combat is how cities dominate combat due to a lack of open field. Everything gets clogged up in between cities and artifically made small armies don't have any maneuverability. This isn't a gripe against 1up, as I think there are some tactically great ideas that stem from it, but rather against the scale of the maps. I think, and hope in civ 6, that we have each of these current hexes broken down into six small hexes. Units would take up one or maybe two of these, cities would grow through these, and terrain and resources would change on this new scale. Cities, and early ranged would then only be able to bombard out two mini hexes which would make open field combat more possible for armies. Basically I want to increase hexes by 600% for every map size, make units a bit easier to produce, and then make more unit diversity so that armies could actually work off of each other.

 

[danaphanous]

I voted composites but I think the biggest problem with CiV combat is how cities dominate combat due to a lack of open field. Everything gets clogged up in between cities and artifically made small armies don't have any maneuverability. This isn't a gripe against 1up, as I think there are some tactically great ideas that stem from it, but rather against the scale of the maps. I think, and hope in civ 6, that we have each of these current hexes broken down into six small hexes. Units would take up one or maybe two of these, cities would grow through these, and terrain and resources would change on this new scale. Cities, and early ranged would then only be able to bombard out two mini hexes which would make open field combat more possible for armies. Basically I want to increase hexes by 600% for every map size, make units a bit easier to produce, and then make more unit diversity so that armies could actually work off of each other.

Interesting idea...couldn't you also just switch the city spacing requirements up with the current game though? I fail to see how doing this is any different than changing the city spacing to 5+ and playing on a huge map...am I correct? You're essentially adding a ton of new hexes therefore making the map bigger...or were you saying cities could grow into and usurp multiple hexes?

 

[meowschwitz]

Interesting idea...couldn't you also just switch the city spacing requirements up with the current game though? I fail to see how doing this is any different than changing the city spacing to 5+ and playing on a huge map...am I correct? You're essentially adding a ton of new hexes therefore making the map bigger...or were you saying cities could grow into and usurp multiple hexes?

Cities should grow through those smaller hexes and make defending them interesting. Walls will allow city bombardment for two smaller hexes around where it's built. It will need to be added onto as the city grows if you want to protect your city fully. Having a ton more hexes allows for units to be made cheaper again and for scale to be preserved a bit. Changing the city spacing on a huge map would make road costs rise and still wouldn't solve the problem as that's only one or two extra hexes when I'm talking 18 in that same space between cities. Tile yields would also have to behave differently as some improvements and resources would span multiple tiles. As you can see, this is more an idea for civ 6 as it would need some major changes to many systems and a faster running game to deal with so much more data on even the basic sized maps.

 

[Krajzen]

@Danaphanous thanks for this brilliant image

In fact I am working on one thing in which this chart can greatly help me...

@Meowschwitz - hah, this is the main thing I forgot about. Yeah, I also don't like that and it is pretty hard to improve. It would require changing the entire scale of the game.

My dream would be:
- ...optimized awesome advanced graphic engine which would allow on
- ...cities consisting of multiple hexes, growing in all directions (and awesome customization of each City Tile)
- ...and smaller villages/towns in the metropolis range
- ...armies with place to maneuver.