I like to think of archers as "snipers" of sort, able to pick out enemies from afar and take them down, albeit with lesser firepower. They are good at firing on defense and in open territory, and the extra range seems to fit this. I think civs with early archers that can shoot down Krogs/enemies from a 2 range is hella fun, and it seems less fitting to hunt down enemies in open areas with siege weapons that have 2 range.
Why is it less fitting to hit Krogs with siege weapons than Archers, though?
Also, IIRC, a lot of the more powerful siege weapons require a large number of shields, frequently also 1 or more Strategic resource (e.g. Lumber, Iron, Saltpeter, etc.), sometimes population-points, and usually later techs, which means that it's very unlikely that they'd be built for Krog-hunting!
(Not to mention, that at higher difficulty levels, most of the Krog-villages will be long gone by that point!)
Along the line of realism, we could also make an argument that archers should indeed have 1 Firepower and Siege units should have 2 Firepower, since a large crushing boulder should hurt more than a single arrow.
Just to be clear, when I'm talking about bombard-capable units:
B = bombardment
strength. This is the "rock or flames or arrow?" statistic, which is matched against a defender's D-value (when bombarding a unit on another tile) or an attacker's A-value (for defensive-bombardment, when the unit's own tile is attacked), i.e. how
likely is the unit to inflict damage on the target?
R = range (maximum no. of tiles), which is self-explanatory
F = firing rate, i.e. the maximum HP that the target might
potentially lose, if the bombarding unit's B-value wins over the target's D-value, for each bombardment-attack made by one unit (on defence, F -- and hence potential HP-loss -- is always capped at 1)
So in my discussion with tomma above, we didn't talk about B-values at all, only R- and F-values. And my assertion is that (IMHO, of course!
), compared to siege engines, archer-type units should have low(er) range (and bombardment-strength), but higher firing-rates.
I guess the essential question is whether HP is regarded as the health of an individual fighter, or the collective manpower of a troop...?
This is a great thought, but wouldn't every harbor (even the merchant harbors) allow trade of ALL resources to another continent and not just some?
Yes! That's the idea!
So you could build your ("expensive") Harbour SW on your home continent, and then one "cheap" Merchant (of any available type) on each of your overseas landmasses, to allow trade with that landmass.
For example, if i build a 'furs' merchant that requires furs in the big fat cross, and another 'furs' merchant in an adjacent continent to trade with it,
I think you maybe overlooked where I said that the Merchants would (also) all be set as Small Wonders?
That would mean that each Civ would only be able to build
one of each Merchant-type (at most), across
all their coastal towns -- because that Merchant-type would then be removed from the build-lists of
all that Civ's other potential sites. So assuming you'd already built your Harbour-SW on your home continent during the early game, you could then build, say, a Furs-Merchant SW on another landmass (continent or island) to allow water-trade to (every connected town on) that landmass. But then for the third (and fourth and fifth) landmass you occupied, you would have to build a
different Merchant-type (each time).
And since not all resources would be available near coastal sites (due to random distribution), nor would all resources have corresponding Merchants (to minimise additions to the building-list, not to mention limiting the number of potentially allowable trade-routes), there would then likely be occasions where the human player might have to think a little bit carefully about which Merchant they wanted to build where.
Obviously the AI would likely not be able to deal with that last consideration, but since the AI always settles near resources when it can, each AI-tribe would likely always be able to build at least one Merchant-type
somewhere (even if on their home landmass, defeating the object). And if/when someone else captured that town/location later, destroying the Merchant (AFAIK, SWs are destroyed on capture -- but this could be guaranteed by giving the Merchant +1 Culture), the victor would then be able to replace it quickly -- provided that they had not already built one of that type elsewhere.
Also, as Civs got eliminated, the total number of Merchants which could be built, would also be reduced accordingly. Essentially, 1 Harbour-hub per each of the many Civs in the early game, would be replaced by multiple Merchant-hubs, but for only a few Civs, during the late game.
How did gifting cities allow you to speed up your advance? Asking since i'm not familiar with as many advanced strategies as you are.
Any town which had been 'pre-owned' by the Civ I gifted it to, immediately got its Cultural borders popped 'back' to where they had been prior to capture by the Brehton/Skaven. And since I had an RoP with the Dwarves and the Elves, this often meant a quicker journey for my healthy units (including my Artillery!) to the next town on my target-list.
It also meant that I didn't have to garrison the gifted town myself, and the Brehton couldn't reach the captured town as easily over the following interturn (which in turn meant that I didn't have to worry about accumulating more WW-points for losing troops, or the town, to an attack -- or a flip).
let me see if I can make changes to mitigate this issue.
