Unit battle system needs a big overhaul...

[DaveGold]

The CIV5 combat with a single unit in each hex is quite abstract. It resembles Chess more than it resembles CIV4 combat. There is very good computer AI for chess so there should be some good AI for CIV5, IMHO, at least at the higher difficulties. I'm pretty sure the AI of a mobile phone could beat me at chess.

 

[Venger]

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...

JACKPOT.

This is EXACTLY it. Units should be built at a rate not too far off normal rate, otherwise it just makes the game SLOW MOTION.

 

[Lord Tirian]

JACKPOT.

Except that this doesn't mix well with the 1upt restriction, unless you scale the map to the same degree.

Cheers, LT.

 

[Kronpas]

HP needs a BIG overhaul in all game speeds... A unit should NEVER die before it can retaliate... This makes unit composition useless... This also makes it so artillery units mean game over...

If your fast moving horses cannot blitz an artillery unit, or tanks can't blitz artillery units, then you've lost the battle before it has already began...

The way Civ V draws battles out is with movement restriction... The journey to the battle last longer than the battles itself... If it takes you a whole turn to walk onto a hill with a warrior, you are going to get shot by archers without ever reaching them... If the next step is also a hill, you've just been shot 2 times... Even if the warrior does 100x dmg to said archer, it wouldn't matter... If the choke is one hex wide, that one archer is more valuable than a pack of Spartans... (From S P A R T A!)

On a different note, if the game is going to evolve to ranged attacks, they need to make range attacks "miss" because archers are not going to hit 100% of the time... At least give melee units a dang chance of closing at the current mechanics...

Archers are not going to miss in this game, its not a damn RPG.

And if I remember correctly, archers cant shoot uphill, nor can they shoot over hills, so your warrior have much room to maneuver. If you let them take the high ground before the battle begins, its your own fault. The real game balance killer is when arty with 3 hexes range and high damage attack appears (and any special unit with 3 hex range attack, eg. longbowman). Arty isnt THAT effective in real life (in regard both damage to troops and accuracy), you have to bring a lot of them to the battle site to make a real difference. The game devolves into boring volley exchange until one side exhausts their ranger reserve, and since AI has no way to make use of its own troops human always comes out winner.

 

[Matte979]

So I just tested some changes that seem to work pretty good in my epic game.

The list. Tried to balance Archers without changing it to much.

So I increase hitpoints and lower experience from range attack.

A change that makes a huge diffrence is minimum damage, I felt that even units in forest or hills suffered pretty heavy damage from archers the culprit is the minimum damage setting.
In my current game my archer dealt 1 hp per turn when a barbarian was on hilly forest. I should also mention that I removed the players barbarian bonus.

This is in the Global Defines XML

1. Increase HP of units to 15 from 10 and cities to 30 from 20
2. City Heals 3 points per turn instead of 1
3. City Base Strength 9 instead of 6
4. Increased experience to 15 instead of 10 as base
5. Lowered Exeperience from Range Attacks to 1
6. Lower min Melee Damage for same strength from 4 to 3
7. Lower Possible Melee extra damage for same strength from 4 to 3
8. Lower Ranged same strength min Damage from 2.5 to 1.5
9. Lower Ranged same strength extra min damage from 3 to 2

I also did 2 changes to AI. GlobalAIDefines XML.

1. Increased Base defence units per city to 3 from 1
2. Increased Base defence units overall from 2 to 4.

I also halved unit maintenace. This stabilizes the game, I still have aggresive AI but not crazy warmongers, I think the problem with the vanilla game is that they AI has no defenders so the other AI thinks its a good time to attack them.

I would make a mod, but changes in this area is something that we need from official patches.

 

[Venger]

Except that this doesn't mix well with the 1upt restriction, unless you scale the map to the same degree.

Not sure I follow - you are still unit capped by resources and maintenance. Maybe I am not seeing where you are going.

And for the record - I don't think Civ mixes well with a 1UPT restriction. I'd like to see a small cap (2-4), but one unit only I find to be too restrictive and aggravating to deal with.