The Industrial and Modern Tech Trees are Utterly Broken

[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.

 

[fyar]

I'm also thinking of increasing the intercept probability of triplanes from a paltry 50% (which is horsehockeye) 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.

 

[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...

 

[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.

 

[Boris Gudenuf]

Replace GWB with Zeppelins. Zeppelins have extremely long range, but, like Missionaries and such now, can suffer attrition (historically, lost more airships to storms and weather than to the enemy). Very low bombing effect, but, as said, very large viewing radius.
Machineguns get an AA effect against Triplanes and Fighters (low-flying aircraft). Regular AA will come later, but should be placed in the Tech Tree at about the same time as Bombers.
Historically, regular artillery (light German 77mm field guns, specifically) took out more of the WWI 'landships' than anything except mechanical breakdowns. Give artillery a slight bonus against Mobile Units - they were death on cavalry as well as being used even in WWII against armor.

Any mass use of air power requires major ground support and construction. Therefore, the unlimited basing of aircraft is a another complete game breaker, but easily remedied:
City = maximum of 3 aircraft based, plus 1 aircraft for every 5 population points over 10.
Airport = + 3 aircraft
Fortress = maximum 6 aircraft based

In other words, a 30 population capital city with an Airport can base 10 aircraft, but that's not going to happen very often. To sustain a major air offensive, you'll need to expend Great Generals or rely on massed aircraft carriers lurking off the coast.

The real problem is that the sequence in the Industrial/Modern Tech Tree is so FUBARed now that the relationships between weapons and units is skewed. Just for examples:
GWI represents infantry armed with smokeless-powder magazine rifles. Historicaly they started appearing about 1885-1890. At virtually the same time, the modern gas or recoil operated machinegun appeared. The Gatling Gun, always a very unreliable weapon, only lasted for about 20 years at most, unlike its near-universality in the game. Indirect fire artillery techniques did not appear until 1905 (Russo-Japanese War) and were not perfected until 1917 (mobile forward observers, mathematical registration, ultra long range fire with meteorological data calculations). Which is approximately the same date as the introduction of the Landship.

On the sea, the Ironclad dates from 1860-1865, while the modern submarine comes along about 1900 - 1905 and the modern destroyer, which was originally called the Torpedo Boat Destroyer because it was designed to counter the surface version of the torpedo-carrying submarine, starts appearing at about the same time or a few years earlier. The modern Dreadnaught battleship dates from 1906. The aircraft carrier with an air group that can do any real amount of damage doesn't come along until the early 1930s (earlier ships could launch and land aircraft, but the aircraft didn't have any effective weapons until dive bombing and air-launched torpedos were perfected)

In the air, the 'triplane' or pursuit aircraft, was perfected between 1915 and 1918, the multiple engined bomber in 1918. Neither had any appreciable effect against ground troops, cities or ships except in EXTREMELY favorable circumstances - Billy Mitchell demonstrated GWB against anchored, unmanned battleships, and 'triplanes' or pursuit aircraft spent most of their time shooting down reconnaissance aircraft and artillery spotting balloons - and each other. The first semi-effective bombers were Zeppelins, which bombed London during WWI but, while terrorizing some of the population, managed to do about as much damage in two years as one WWII air raid did in one night.
Effective antitank guns start appearing in the early 1920s, and only 15 years later does the tank as represented in the game appear. Antiaircraft guns (75-77mm) were improvised with vertical-firing mounts by 1918, started getting really effective by the early 1930s. The introduction of Radar, by the way, should result in a very much more effective air defense, but has no such effect in the game at all.

In short, correct the Tech Tree shenanigans and a lot of the Unit - Counterunit problems will solve themselves...

 

[gaiko]

The whole bomber line up to Stealth needs nerfing, IMO. Main combat effect of bombers should be to tilt the battlefield a bit in favor of the attacker, not be the main battering ram. That, as always, was the main task of artillery/rocket artillery.

Otherwise, bombers should perform two strategic and one tactical function:
- bomb cities to increase unhappiness
- bomb resource developments/roads/railroads/workers
- counterbattery artillery (a key current function at present)

And yeah, a reasonable stacking limit.

 

[MarshalN]

Replace GWB with Zeppelins. Zeppelins have extremely long range, but, like Missionaries and such now, can suffer attrition (historically, lost more airships to storms and weather than to the enemy). Very low bombing effect, but, as said, very large viewing radius.
Machineguns get an AA effect against Triplanes and Fighters (low-flying aircraft). Regular AA will come later, but should be placed in the Tech Tree at about the same time as Bombers.
Historically, regular artillery (light German 77mm field guns, specifically) took out more of the WWI 'landships' than anything except mechanical breakdowns. Give artillery a slight bonus against Mobile Units - they were death on cavalry as well as being used even in WWII against armor.

Any mass use of air power requires major ground support and construction. Therefore, the unlimited basing of aircraft is a another complete game breaker, but easily remedied:
City = maximum of 3 aircraft based, plus 1 aircraft for every 5 population points over 10.
Airport = + 3 aircraft
Fortress = maximum 6 aircraft based

In other words, a 30 population capital city with an Airport can base 10 aircraft, but that's not going to happen very often. To sustain a major air offensive, you'll need to expend Great Generals or rely on massed aircraft carriers lurking off the coast.

The real problem is that the sequence in the Industrial/Modern Tech Tree is so FUBARed now that the relationships between weapons and units is skewed. Just for examples:
GWI represents infantry armed with smokeless-powder magazine rifles. Historicaly they started appearing about 1885-1890. At virtually the same time, the modern gas or recoil operated machinegun appeared. The Gatling Gun, always a very unreliable weapon, only lasted for about 20 years at most, unlike its near-universality in the game. Indirect fire artillery techniques did not appear until 1905 (Russo-Japanese War) and were not perfected until 1917 (mobile forward observers, mathematical registration, ultra long range fire with meteorological data calculations). Which is approximately the same date as the introduction of the Landship.

On the sea, the Ironclad dates from 1860-1865, while the modern submarine comes along about 1900 - 1905 and the modern destroyer, which was originally called the Torpedo Boat Destroyer because it was designed to counter the surface version of the torpedo-carrying submarine, starts appearing at about the same time or a few years earlier. The modern Dreadnaught battleship dates from 1906. The aircraft carrier with an air group that can do any real amount of damage doesn't come along until the early 1930s (earlier ships could launch and land aircraft, but the aircraft didn't have any effective weapons until dive bombing and air-launched torpedos were perfected)

In the air, the 'triplane' or pursuit aircraft, was perfected between 1915 and 1918, the multiple engined bomber in 1918. Neither had any appreciable effect against ground troops, cities or ships except in EXTREMELY favorable circumstances - Billy Mitchell demonstrated GWB against anchored, unmanned battleships, and 'triplanes' or pursuit aircraft spent most of their time shooting down reconnaissance aircraft and artillery spotting balloons - and each other. The first semi-effective bombers were Zeppelins, which bombed London during WWI but, while terrorizing some of the population, managed to do about as much damage in two years as one WWII air raid did in one night.
Effective antitank guns start appearing in the early 1920s, and only 15 years later does the tank as represented in the game appear. Antiaircraft guns (75-77mm) were improvised with vertical-firing mounts by 1918, started getting really effective by the early 1930s. The introduction of Radar, by the way, should result in a very much more effective air defense, but has no such effect in the game at all.

In short, correct the Tech Tree shenanigans and a lot of the Unit - Counterunit problems will solve themselves...

Someone from Firaxis should read this and just fix the damn tech tree according to it.

 

[Peng Qi]

Another problem with current tree: City States have no way to defend themselves from aircraft.

 

[Zenstrive]

....my great war bombers always suffer from even simple bombing run to riflemen.
And you need OIL for great war bombers, right?
I prefer artilleries myself to conquer a continent, then battleship and destroyers to have a beachhead on other continents, THEN wipe em out with bombing runs.