Why not just 'Dreadnought?' Sounds a bit more menacing than 'Turret Ship.' 
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unit-promotion balance thread
- Thread starter mystikx21
- Start date
Some thoughts on various military units:
Cities: High health, low attack, low regeneration cities makes a siege feel like an actual siege and forces the defender to have an actual army to defend against aggressors, but also gives him time to respond to an attack. Defense buildings should add very large amounts of extra hp, leading to cities that are impossible to take quickly or easily, but possible to swarm even with lower tech units if the attacker brings enough numbers.
Gatling Gun: Make it into an anti-infantry counter unit with an additional +25% or 33% versus infantry. It makes a lot of sense historically (gatling guns were the infantry counters of their time, replacing grapeshot rounds from cannons) and it makes the unit's role more distinct. It also lets us solve the Xbow->Gatling upgrade problem with a new "Grenadier" unit. The Grenadier would be a mid renaissance 1 range anti-infantry ranged unit (basically my proposed role for gatling gun). The new upgrade path would be Xbow -> Grenadier -> Gatling.
Melee/Infantry units: Give them +25% versus cities or access to powerful anti-city promotions (or both), that way ordinary infantry is still useful when you have access to specialized unit killers like horsemen, archers or my suggested grenadiers.
Artillery: Dramatically reduce its killing power versus (land) units. Make it a dedicated siege unit that can provide modest (but reliable) support to land units. Like Stalker0 mentioned, there are too many ranged units in the industrial era. In general, siege units should not be "better, more expensive ranged units" but city killers.
Chariot Archer: I think "shoot-and-run" (like in CEP) is very strong and should be reserved for unique units. Have it upgrade into Crossbowmen; they have the most similar role to BNW Chariots.
Cities: High health, low attack, low regeneration cities makes a siege feel like an actual siege and forces the defender to have an actual army to defend against aggressors, but also gives him time to respond to an attack. Defense buildings should add very large amounts of extra hp, leading to cities that are impossible to take quickly or easily, but possible to swarm even with lower tech units if the attacker brings enough numbers.
Gatling Gun: Make it into an anti-infantry counter unit with an additional +25% or 33% versus infantry. It makes a lot of sense historically (gatling guns were the infantry counters of their time, replacing grapeshot rounds from cannons) and it makes the unit's role more distinct. It also lets us solve the Xbow->Gatling upgrade problem with a new "Grenadier" unit. The Grenadier would be a mid renaissance 1 range anti-infantry ranged unit (basically my proposed role for gatling gun). The new upgrade path would be Xbow -> Grenadier -> Gatling.
Melee/Infantry units: Give them +25% versus cities or access to powerful anti-city promotions (or both), that way ordinary infantry is still useful when you have access to specialized unit killers like horsemen, archers or my suggested grenadiers.
Artillery: Dramatically reduce its killing power versus (land) units. Make it a dedicated siege unit that can provide modest (but reliable) support to land units. Like Stalker0 mentioned, there are too many ranged units in the industrial era. In general, siege units should not be "better, more expensive ranged units" but city killers.
Chariot Archer: I think "shoot-and-run" (like in CEP) is very strong and should be reserved for unique units. Have it upgrade into Crossbowmen; they have the most similar role to BNW Chariots.
Thoughts on the melee balance
1) Give swords a city bonus for free on the basis of their iron requirement. This should stop at gunpowder
2) Give horses/archers a city penalty to encourage their use as anti-unit.
3) Give artillery/siege a unit penalty (but make them somewhat stronger overall so they're not too weak to be one shot kills).
I like the idea of the GG line being an anti-infantry or anti-tank (bazooka). But the unit stats still would need to change. I'm still fine with them being stronger on defence, but if they have an anti-unit counter role they should be reduced somewhat further. I also would not terribly mind a grenadier unit in between xbow and GG. I'm not overly persuaded it is essential either.
Chariots I think should remain mobile horse units when upgraded. That is their primary attribute is the mobility, not the role of defender like an xbow, as they are the first fast unit you can get. They also have a resource requirement, the same one as horse units. They should upgrade accordingly. The lancer is the unit that I have a harder time finding a clearer role what to do with them as they are available at the same time as another mobile unit.
1) Give swords a city bonus for free on the basis of their iron requirement. This should stop at gunpowder
2) Give horses/archers a city penalty to encourage their use as anti-unit.
3) Give artillery/siege a unit penalty (but make them somewhat stronger overall so they're not too weak to be one shot kills).
I like the idea of the GG line being an anti-infantry or anti-tank (bazooka). But the unit stats still would need to change. I'm still fine with them being stronger on defence, but if they have an anti-unit counter role they should be reduced somewhat further. I also would not terribly mind a grenadier unit in between xbow and GG. I'm not overly persuaded it is essential either.
Chariots I think should remain mobile horse units when upgraded. That is their primary attribute is the mobility, not the role of defender like an xbow, as they are the first fast unit you can get. They also have a resource requirement, the same one as horse units. They should upgrade accordingly. The lancer is the unit that I have a harder time finding a clearer role what to do with them as they are available at the same time as another mobile unit.
Lord Tirian
Erratic Poster
I'd prefer to have the ironclad as melee ship, having the ironclad as non-ocean going "melee" ship is... kind of Civ. Though we could swap the model for the Monitor or the Virginia models from the Civil War scenario and re-use the vanilla ironclad model. Might be confusing, though...
I'm not sure whether "Dreadnaught" works too well, mostly because there's some blurriness between dreadnaught and battleships.
My suggestion would be Protected Cruiser or Armoured Cruiser (preferring the former). There's enough variety in that category that GeneralMatt's models could almost fit there, too (perhaps with a slight texture change).
I'd prefer to have the ironclad as melee ship, having the ironclad as non-ocean going "melee" ship is... kind of Civ. Though we could swap the model for the Monitor or the Virginia models from the Civil War scenario and re-use the vanilla ironclad model. Might be confusing, though...
I'm not sure whether "Dreadnaught" works too well, mostly because there's some blurriness between dreadnaught and battleships.
My suggestion would be Protected Cruiser or Armoured Cruiser (preferring the former). There's enough variety in that category that GeneralMatt's models could almost fit there, too (perhaps with a slight texture change).
'Cruiser' would work well as a name, and would stick to the 'simple' names used by civ to describe military units. Agreed that in actual maritime history dreadnaught/nought and battleship are pretty similar, but in Civ terms the name being different is really all that matters.
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+1 for cruiser
+2 from me!
Wodhann
South American Norse God
- Joined
- Feb 27, 2014
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Just my 2 cents, the main problem I have with unit promotions in this game is the abrupt crossbowman > gattling gun evolution, and how cavalry units keep changing their bonus and merging with spear units throughout its promotion path.
I would much preffer is if there were some "archetypes" of units and it followed through with it along the promotion path intuitively and linearly.
In order for that to happen a few new units would have to be created, which I'm completely fine with. Especially one to fill the crossbowman > gattling path.
I would much preffer is if there were some "archetypes" of units and it followed through with it along the promotion path intuitively and linearly.
In order for that to happen a few new units would have to be created, which I'm completely fine with. Especially one to fill the crossbowman > gattling path.
I think 'grenadier' was tossed about as a segue b/w crossbowman > gatling gun. Makes sense to me.
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The spear/pike lancer upgrade path (and onward) was mentioned as one of the primary issues on page one. 
I haven't seen an alternative proposed yet to the CEP approach, which deletes one unit (ATG) and merges lancers (or cavalry) with a separate unit path, but adds no units to it, and could be combined with multiple upgrade paths for the individual units involved. But I'd be willing to entertain a proposal to deal with it.
It sounds like we have resolved the frigate-BB issue with a cruiser, with a partial acknowledgement of a gap for a melee ship later (post destroyer). So I think that's mostly settled.
If there's a consensus for a grenadier in between the xbow and gatling gun, I could live with that. I'm more ambivalent about the need for it as I don't find the xbow to get significantly weakened up until the point where gatling guns arrive in as far as they still have a role to perform to throw out damage at things. But I might be skewed based on the CEP tech tree. I'll try some games with the current default techs this weekend.
I haven't seen an alternative proposed yet to the CEP approach, which deletes one unit (ATG) and merges lancers (or cavalry) with a separate unit path, but adds no units to it, and could be combined with multiple upgrade paths for the individual units involved. But I'd be willing to entertain a proposal to deal with it.
It sounds like we have resolved the frigate-BB issue with a cruiser, with a partial acknowledgement of a gap for a melee ship later (post destroyer). So I think that's mostly settled.
If there's a consensus for a grenadier in between the xbow and gatling gun, I could live with that. I'm more ambivalent about the need for it as I don't find the xbow to get significantly weakened up until the point where gatling guns arrive in as far as they still have a role to perform to throw out damage at things. But I might be skewed based on the CEP tech tree. I'll try some games with the current default techs this weekend.
Wodhann
South American Norse God
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Grenadier is interesting, but flavor-wise it doesn't really follow that smoothly (going from crossbows to explosives to machine guns)
Didn't someone make an unit that was basically the earliest incarnation of machine guns and put it between crossbow and gattling? I forgot what it was.
Didn't someone make an unit that was basically the earliest incarnation of machine guns and put it between crossbow and gattling? I forgot what it was.
Gatling gun is the earliest incarnation of the machine gun. It is considered a machine gun, but it doesn't follow the modern design. It's basically a primitive mini-gun. There's another version around the same time, but Gatling was more widely used. You could maybe go with a Puckle Gun before that, but nobody used it and it wasn't intended for land warfare.
Rifles.
Yet riflemen are already melee units in the game - so what do we do?
Make something up? I'unno. That's what I do when writing lectures seems to work.
(Definitely joking here).
Honestly? We're looking for something 'lobbed,' right? Grenadier. I don't really see another easy option, as 18-19th c. = age of bullets.
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I guess crossbow > explosive > gatling doesn't quite make sense, but it seems to at least fit the use-case!
We could always steal the rifleman and make it a ranged unit and replace it with another, but I'm not sure about that.
I'd rather swap as few units in unit role (ranged/melee) as possible, and we would still need a unit to replace it. If we are moving a unit in role from its default, there needs to be a balance reason really rather than cosmetics. For now if there needs to be a unit there, use grenadier. It was in Civ4 and if we use an anti-infantry effect for the post-archer ranged units, it performs the same function historically (shock troops on offense, tough defence).
PS, in CEP we also used Arquebusier as the first musket unit, in order to replace the silly "Great War Infantry" name (with Rifleman, we moved everything up one until Infantry).
I think that leaves the lancer problem.
PS, in CEP we also used Arquebusier as the first musket unit, in order to replace the silly "Great War Infantry" name (with Rifleman, we moved everything up one until Infantry).
I think that leaves the lancer problem.
