The Industrial and Modern Tech Trees are Utterly Broken

[fyar]

I think that Bombers are extremely over powered. Every game is a beeline to flight and once there, building anything but bombers a bad idea. All you need is bombers and cavalry to take the cities. Triplanes are garbage at being a counter and terrible at fighting themselves.

However this is realistic. Flight changed the way the world fought wars. Air superiority dominates any war/battle. 1 bombing can do more damage than an entire platoon of ground troops in reality. Imagine if some one tried to invade the US with no form of anti-air. They would get wiped off the planet with almost no losses to the US. Everything they have would get destroyed before even reaching US soil.

CraigMak, I agree that it's realistic now, but it's not realistic during the era in question. Bombers did not play a huge role in deciding the Great War. And as has been mentioned, gameplay-wise it's less fun when the proper strategy is to spam a single unit that has no counter. I honestly think the GWB needs to go completely, both for historical and gameplay reasons.

 

[rexman07]

I remember when Beyond the Sword introduced Airships and we had the same problem. Those death blimps would beat down upon your troops and flee before you could capture the city. There was no counter at all.

I guess oil is supposed to limit Great War Bombers, but in practice it's not enough of a limit?

One or both of these nerfs would suffice:
A Great War Bomber should probably do a bit less damage and take a bit more damage (and maybe even get shot down) when attacking non-AA units.
There should be a limit to how many air units can operate out of a city in one turn.

 

[Peng Qi]

However this is realistic. Flight changed the way the world fought wars. Air superiority dominates any war/battle. 1 bombing can do more damage than an entire platoon of ground troops in reality. Imagine if some one tried to invade the US with no form of anti-air. They would get wiped off the planet with almost no losses to the US. Everything they have would get destroyed before even reaching US soil.

...OK, now imagine if all they brought were bombers.

 

[MarshalN]

I think that Bombers are extremely over powered. Every game is a beeline to flight and once there, building anything but bombers a bad idea. All you need is bombers and cavalry to take the cities. Triplanes are garbage at being a counter and terrible at fighting themselves.

However this is realistic. Flight changed the way the world fought wars. Air superiority dominates any war/battle. 1 bombing can do more damage than an entire platoon of ground troops in reality. Imagine if some one tried to invade the US with no form of anti-air. They would get wiped off the planet with almost no losses to the US. Everything they have would get destroyed before even reaching US soil.

You are thinking of ww2, in ww1 (the Great War) bombers were just planes carrying a few small bombs. If they changed the way wars were fought we wouldn't have had four years of static trench warfare.

 

[Olleus]

For what it's worth, I've found a solution that works quite well in my games.

I've merged the AA gun and anti tank gun into a "battery" unit with low strength and bonuses against both planes and tanks. Still unlocked at ballistics, but I've reworked the tech tree so that flight requires dynamite. Now you have a counter that the AI is quite fond of building and is far less situation (also helps them deal with tanks, which they used to be terrible at).

I'm also thinking of increasing the intercept probability of triplanes from a paltry 50% (which is horsehockye) to a more reasonable 80%. Maybe also lowering the strength of GWB a little.

 

[fyar]

I'm also thinking of increasing the intercept probability of triplanes from a paltry 50% (which is horsehockye) to a more reasonable 80%. Maybe also lowering the strength of GWB a little.

To be honest, I didn't even know that Triplanes have <100% chance of interception. (Shows how often I build them.) What's the probability for Fighters and Jet Fighters?

 

[Gort]

I always thought it might be best to just have air warfare abstracted. Like, bombers you build disappear into your "air force", which gives you an "air support" modifier, which is reduced if the enemy has more/better fighters than you do. And you wouldn't get it if your unit was fighting away from a place that could give you air support, such as a city or aircraft carrier.

So you wouldn't actually see bombers and such on the map, they'd be more in the background. Maybe when your units fought you'd get a little animation of bombers and fighters doing their thing.

If they stick with the current system (which they will), they really need to re-do the animations and controls for air units. The only thing worse than being attacked by a stack of bombers is rebasing them and ordering them to attack ONE AT A TIME. If you're going to break the rules of one-unit-per-tile, you need to bring back stack attack and stack movement.

 

[bonafide11]

There should be a limit of planes per city, but 3 is a little too low in my opinion. Since it's extremely difficult to take cities before flight, and even tougher before artillery, if you want to wage war, you often have to wait until flight. I think making it too difficult to capture cities before flight by limiting cities to 3 planes would make the game too peaceful and not all that interesting.

I'm all for balancing the game, but going too extreme is not the solution. I don't like making war an even less desirable option to the game than it is, and overly nerfing flight would do that.

 

[Olleus]

To be honest, I didn't even know that Triplanes have <100% chance of interception. (Shows how often I build them.) What's the probability for Fighters and Jet Fighters?

Fighters are 100%, haven't checked jet fighters but I assume the same?

And cities are not that difficult to capture before flight, or even artillery. Just requires planning and sometimes, a little sarcrifice. But considering that healing units is free, having a small attrition cost by losing units seems fair enough.

 

[Chemical Toilet]

So you're saying that 3 years is "long before???" And also, anti-tank guns are just artillery pieces pointed horizontally, so in reality anti-tank guns preceded the tank.

(Also, early flak guns were just artillery pieces loaded with flak shells, so AA preceded aircraft too.)

I don't believe I used the phrase "long before".

AT guns are usually less powerful and much smaller then standard field artillery. I may be wrong, but Artillery in WWI usually sat miles behind the front lines, they very rarely had guns just right behind the trench. So while you're right that they're both cannons, they play very different roles and are deployed in different ways.

It's safe to say that Anti Tank guns probably weren't used to any sort of reliable extent, especially considering how late tanks came into the war and how rarely they appeared.

But flak wasn't used too often in WWI either. Planes were shot down with machine guns and rifles.

 

[Silverman6083]

Ok here is what really upsets me. Flight and Combustion are on the same line. Really? I don't need COMBUSTION for Flight? Do I have freaking gas-powered triplanes?

 

[Breadsmith]

Is this any worse than my Ironclads that don't need iron? What are they clad in? Hopes and dreams? Maybe I cover them in all this bloody citrus nobody wants because they banned it?

 

[apotheoser]

Is this any worse than my Ironclads that don't need iron? What are they clad in? Hopes and dreams? Maybe I cover them in all this bloody citrus nobody wants because they banned it?

really, frigates should require citrus! to keep from getting scurvy! (instead of iron)(lol), and ironclads should require iron and coal.

favorite thing about the complete screw-up that is the modern tech era: you can have radar without radio. wut.

 

[seasnake]

If you have certain resources you should have bonuses: Citrus should give your frigate more movement, iron should help build wonders like Cristo Redentor and Eiffel Tower, etc.

 

[apotheoser]

Well, Cristo Redentor is built out of soapstone and some concrete.

It is interesting that Marble gives +15% to ancient/classical wonders but that it's the only luxury resource with a bonus like that.

Salt should give a small growth % across the empire, Citrus should increase ship movement before the Modern era, Bananas should... wait, this is getting kind of silly...

 

[Olleus]

Well a lot of resources have a "secondary" bonus as it is.

Wine and incense give huge amounts of faith/culture with the right pantheon or monasteries.
Elephants give happiness with a circus.
Salt gives such a ridiculously good yield as it is, its already OP.
Gold and silver are further improved with the right pantheon or mints.
And so on...

 

[Peng Qi]

I don't believe I used the phrase "long before".

No, I did.

 

[funkymunky]

I always thought great war bombers was a stretch, historically speaking. I can't recall WWI to have had 'bombers', per say. It was more famous for the triplane fighters, which were actually designed to take down zeppelins. Now, if Civ 5 were to replace the GWB with zepplins, giving them the ability to drop bombs that are far weaker than the current GWB, but also give them a large view radius to help artillery fire, I think that would be better historically and in gameplay balance terms.

 

[KrikkitTwo]

Simply eliminating GWB (bombers first with flight) might be the best (keep fighters.. they can perform strikes and have the 6 range vision)

[although replacing them with weaker zepplins might be good/ more fun]

 

[apotheoser]

Yeah, GWB are pretty ridiculous. I hadn't had a war-mongering game where I needed to use them until recently but I was shocked at how effective they were. After that it was nothing but GWB and ships until X-COM.

One really underrated them about them is how easy it is to re-base them across the planet for your next war, while getting your land forces back in order and shipped across might take a dozen turns.