Unit battle system needs a big overhaul...

[KAuss]

I think horse / tank units in game should ignore ZOC... Same with faster ships like the Caravel where speed is key... This way they can sneak up to back lines and get to those dang artillery units / longbows!!!

However, the ZOC is resumed with hard counters like anti vehicle gun / spear pikes... Or like my other suggestion, tile improvements to get ZOC on these units!

Also let horses / tank use enemy road at 1 move point instead of .5

Cause in real life tanks use roads when invading!

Maybe even link the static defenses to culture for the city so they're auto built and make culture more important to city defense...

 

[Senethro]

Balance issues on a gimmick gamespeed that I've never seen the point of? Units building too slowly? Well I never!

 

[Tutkarz]

So do we have anyone working to create a mod of off this ideas or we just waiting now?

And another thing that come to my mind is heal promotion. Does it heal full hp or 10hp? And how much it should heal with incrased hp ...

 

[Ahriman]

Actually a decent suggestion: a quick fix for this would be to raise the hit points to 20 (40 for cities), or even 30 (60 for cities). You wouldn't have to change the combat system, damage could remain the same. Sounds like a mod. . .

I think this is a pretty decent idea.

I was very surprised about how fast units die. I expected something like Battle for Wesnoth, where units take 3-4 attacks from equivalent units to die, less if they're on good terrain. Whereas in Civ5 they normally take 2 attacks from equivalent units to die.

The one downside of such a move, is that it risks favoring the human player even more. The human player is vastly better at unit preservation, retreating damaged units, and so forth.

With the current system, units on open ground will sometimes die. With more hp, its possible the human player might be able to avoid ever losing *any* units.

Another alternative is to dramatically reduce unit production costs, while increasing maintenance costs. This would tend to favor the AI more, since it actually (relatively) penalizes the humans's ability to preserve their units.
I'd also make civilian units (workers!) cost less maintenance than others.

 

[Matte979]

Great Idea, I allready reduced the XP for range combat to 1 and upped city HP and strength. But with this change I think you need to increase XP per level. I was actually thinking next to reduce range combat damage because of the fact mention that you dont have time to retaliate, I wonder why I did not think about this. There are tons of balance problems with orignal game with combat and the combat on larger maps and Epic and Marathon is just not balanced or scaled to the other game mechanics correctly.

Time to change it and test.

Go to Globaldefine in
Steam\steamapps\common\sid meier's civilization v\Assets\Gameplay\XML

Search for <!--Experience & Promotion Defines-->

Increase XP per Level and great general threshold, I also decreased range XP. You could also increase city strength just above those values, the reason is that more unit might be able to actually attack the city now.

Next search for <!-- Unit/Combat Defines -->

Here you got city hp and unit hp.

1. Up City health
2. Up City healing
3. Up Unit Max Hitpoints

I think the benefits to the player is a concern but the impalance towards the player in the current game specially on range combat is allready there. The AI seem pretty capable to do focus fire/attack which should help it specially on range combat as they will target the week units and kill them when the retaliate. Trick is to not increase it to much.
I am going to test and see what the effect are.

Every change has unintended result, so time to test. I thought in civ3 we had 30hp right? Btw Japan will be crazy with more hp. And to follow this I think the bonuses to Strength for Generals etc needs to be toned down.

 

[Zelig]

In reality, the unit build time should be the same as normal game, I don't know why they upped it... A Marathon game is suppose to let you play a certain era longer, not delay everything...

You are suppose to have like 30 fights with medieval units instead of 3 before moving on to muskets...

Well, you can have 30 fights, they'll just mostly be against different players, and you'll win domination by the end.

 

[DaveGold]

I personally don't have a problem with units getting killed quickly if they stand in the wrong place. Don't stand your troops in the wrong place! The advantage of horsemen isn't their flanking etc, it's their ability to attack a unit that is in the wrong place and then run back to the right place. Admittedly, the AI should be much better at standing in the right place.

Archers can't kill tanks. They attack and do zero damage. If well promoted archers are doing damage to unpromoted tanks in vulnerable terrain then it's a different issue.

One problem with CIV 4 was that on higher levels an AI opponent could lose a tremendous number of troops and replace them as fast as you could kill them. If that has gone, good!

A fix for the AI unit movement should come before any tinkering to the mechanics. As soon as the AI can retain/promote/upgrade units the battlefield might feel different.

 

[Ahriman]

The problem isn't your units getting killed quickly, its how easily you can destroy the AI's army. They move their guys up in front of you, you destroy it with ranged fire. They move more guys up, you destroy them before they get a chance to attack. Shooting fish in a barrel.

One problem with CIV 4 was that on higher levels an AI opponent could lose a tremendous number of troops and replace them as fast as you could kill them. If that has gone, good!

Strongly disagree. We need to go back towards this. It is the only way to make the AI competitive. As it is, as soon as the AI wastes its army by throwing it on your defenses, they are helpless and you win.

 

[Senethro]

The problem isn't your units getting killed quickly, its how easily you can destroy the AI's army. They move their guys up in front of you, you destroy it with ranged fire. They move more guys up, you destroy them before they get a chance to attack. Shooting fish in a barrel.


Strongly disagree. We need to go back towards this. It is the only way to make the AI competitive. As it is, as soon as the AI wastes its army by throwing it on your defenses, they are helpless and you win.

Mmmmph. While thats certainly one way to solve it and no doubt the easier way, I'd hope Firaxis would at least have a go at making a good tactical AI. I like the low unit count as it gives room to manoevure and increasing that will lead to huge unpleasant meatgrinders at chokepoints.

 

[Lord Tirian]

The problem isn't your units getting killed quickly, its how easily you can destroy the AI's army. They move their guys up in front of you, you destroy it with ranged fire. They move more guys up, you destroy them before they get a chance to attack. Shooting fish in a barrel.

Not to mention that the AI has no freaking idea what choke points/funnels are. If you use the map even only semi-cleverly, you can easily see the AI throwing entire armies onto that single forest tile surrounded by mountains (and your ranged units). *pop* *pop* *pop* goes the army, regardless of technical superiority or not.

Cheers, LT.

 

[Bigwilly 16]

Mmmmph. While thats certainly one way to solve it and no doubt the easier way, I'd hope Firaxis would at least have a go at making a good tactical AI. I like the low unit count as it gives room to manoevure and increasing that will lead to huge unpleasant meatgrinders at chokepoints.

That would be best, agreed, but considering the state of the AI now at release, I'm not holding my breath. I say bump their ability to reproduce units has validity, because the other guy's right, once they wreck on your advancing wall due to poor tactics, it's game over right now in many cases.

There's a lot of talk in this thread about bumping the health of units, but I still believe the AI will piss it away with the same poor AI. A point that I think does have merit is not allowing the player to wall up around the AI and then attack on its terms, killing a fair portion of an AI army without their chance to response. Find a way to fix this, and at least war with the AI won't start off unbalanced. Their ability to make use of their armies is bad enough, let alone when the game mechanic allows us to annihilate a % of their army before they get a chance to respond.

 

[greggbert]

On Standard, the combat works out fine. I don't think it needs an overhaul. I think the problem is with the EPIC setting.

 

[KAuss]

On Standard, the combat works out fine. I don't think it needs an overhaul. I think the problem is with the EPIC setting.

I still can't justify how start of warfare means 50% handicap on the other player's army...

You must allow a retaliation or else you're always going to lose half your army even if they are on rough terrain because the other player picked the time to attack...

Just imagine if the AI abused this, you would have to spend 30 turns replacing your fortified units... Or if the AI pincer you with an alliance attack which is thankfully not in this game... That's before losing your city before you even got to shoot a single arrow...

 

[greggbert]

I still can't justify how start of warfare means 50% handicap on the other player's army...]

My borders are pretty far from my cities. As long as I have anti-cav units near the city I don't tend to lose a lot of units on the AI's initial attack. Also you have to watch your enemy with scout units and boats and planes and stuff. If they start amassing, you need to prepare a rear defense with Cavalry right behind ready to clean up after their initial attack. Also make sure there are a few scouts an obsolete units on the border so they have to destroy them before they can penetrate too far. Scouts are SOO cheap. Mine just patrol the borders, they ALWAYS get killed first but who cares, they're just scouts, if I didnt' want them to die I'd buy them a helmet.

 

[KAuss]

Here is the problem with the current state of affairs... If the AI attacks you, they usually have tech advantage... Or they have numbers advantage...

They will send in single file units to fight the wall you've built...

How easy it is to hold the cpu off should not be the standard to how the game should be balanced... I literally could wreck havoc on the AI with a warrior / archer and a single hill...

What should be looked at is if you ever play with other people... Or if the AI ever evolves to anything other than a 5 year old playing checkers...

Tell me you have not seen cities where the borders are literally touching each other and you can place your artillery unit at your border to bombard theirs? If there are any units lined up to protect the rush, the initiator would win the battle purely because they can focus fire with arrow / calvary and run away after the attack to summon in longswords to meat shield the cannons?

If the AI actually use formations and crept up to your cities, it would be better, but right now they suicide by walking single file into doom...

Still, even if the fight is exciting, once that fight is over, they won't have a replacement army and THAT is where the failure is at the worst...

 

[globalempire]

saying that because a soldier has to move towrds a ranged unti adn it fires adn destroys them before tehy can make it to the front line does nto seem all that bad

i mena its obviously a pain for you, but if you were running at something firing arrows youd probably get stuck by them, or if you run at an artillery battery its gonna fire shells at you and take out your men, then if it has defences they are gonna mop you up.

you say when the horse goes over the hillhe gets shot by archersand cleaned by warriors, well that migth happen, now position other horses coming from the flank, move on stuff happens its not incredibly unrealistic to say theta if you ride overa hill and there are peopel with bows they shoot you.

 

[KAuss]

All I know is right now, bows are OP, especially longbows... If used by a human player in defense, the computer would never touch your army...

You can make hills by building forts, you cannot make plains... Cept for cutting forest / jungle...

Usually in turn based games, archers / ranged units have lower DPS and are used as support dps units... That way when they are alone they will not win against a tanking unit... Either that or they cannot move / shoot on the same turn like siege units...

I unno I can go on forever about it, but I guess not everyone has played 1UPT games before and some are just figuring out how to abuse the system... The game boils down to a bad chess match where no units ever gets replaced... I've been forced 3 times now to win by combat because once you have it started, it's way easier than any other victory type... Makes no logical sense to do any other because it's already there for the taking...

 

[xcrissxcrossx]

I was looking for how to mod units HP, I can't find it. If I could find it, I would make a mod

EDIT: I found it. I'm working on a mod now.

 

[xcrissxcrossx]

I can not for the life of me learn how to use LUA to scale HP and game speed, but I uploaded a mod that makes HP 25 instead of 10 just for the people in this thread.

 

[Wosret84]

One of the mistakes players and the AI will make, especially on defense in unfavorable terrain, is having units too close to the border.

As Georgy Zhukov said, the best defense is to attack, and that means having room to manuver, which means having your strongest units far enough from the border that they cannot be reached in a single turn. Defense in depth means forcing the enemy to come close to you so you can counter-attack on the next turn.

If the AI were smart, it would have only a token scouting force at the border and the bulk of their army deeper inside, and if the player declares war, it should be smart enough to hold back until you've committed a substantial force to the attack, and then strike back in force on the next turn. This would make it impossible for their army to be knocked out on the first turn without a chance to counterattack, and it would make your first move critical.

One thing I liked about CIV IV was that when you captured a city you didn't capture its cultural borders intact, which meant you were vulnerable to counterattack very quickly

Similarly, one tactic I like to do is declare war and then do nothing, and let the AI come to me so I can engage them in my own territory. Again, if the AI were smart, it would think defensivey when you declare war on it, and not try to come and attack you (think the Phoney war in 1939 when France and Germany didn't attack each other in spite of being in a state of war).

Naturally, defense in depth doesn't work if your territory is very small, or if you have critical resources/cities very close to the border.