Unit strength and cost through the ages. Or: Upgrade Path, Corps and Armies

[Akkarin]

TL;DR: You need to spend ~1.5-16 times the production to get an additional 10 strength. Corps are the equivalent of having units one era further advanced.

We already have a thread for upgrade paths, but I want to talk about something different here: How does the strength of the units change through the ages, and how much more do you need to pay for it ?

I put a few things from well of souls into a table. I also assumed a ~0.85 factor between quick and standard speed. First number(s) is melee/ranged strength, second is production cost on standard speed, third is if they need a strategic resource.

|Ancient|Classic|Medieval|Renaissance|Industrial|Modern|Atomic|Information
Melee, Standard|20, 30, 0|35, 70, 1||55, ?, 1||70, 430, 0||?, ?, ?
Anti-Cav, Spear|25(+10), 50, 0||41(+?), ?, ?|||70(+?), 400, 0||?, ?, ?
Heavy Cav|28, 50, 0||48, 120, 1|||80, 480, 1||?, ?, ?
Light Cav||35, ~62, 1|||?, ?, ?||?, ?, ?|
Ranged, Standard|5/15, 25, 0; 15/25, 39, 0||30/40, 120, 0||50/60, ?, ?||65/75, 540, 0|
Siege||23/35, 94, 0||43/55, ?, ?||58/?, ?, ?||?, ?, ?

Surprisingly, this is widely inconsistant. I assume/hope this is partly because eras dont necessarily tell you the whole story when units are available (i.e. first vs. last tech in an era).

But still some interesting stuff. Despite the fact that early game units are cheaper than in Civ, late game units are actually more expensive. Artillery is better than a machine gun previously used wrong str. for machine gun. AT crew is better than infantry and is cheaper. Early cav is worse than anti-cav, lategame cav isnt. And so on.

But lets take a look at how strong units in each era are. To calculate the averages I used the ranged str for ranged units and a str of 70 for artillery, no bonus for anti-cav. Comparision to previous eras are done on an per-unit-class basis. Related units are melee<->anti-cav, heavy cav<->light cav and ranged<->siege. Slingers are treated as ancient units for the avg. str but pre-ancient for comparisions

|Ancient|Classic|Medieval|Renaissance|Industrial|Modern|Atomic
avg. str.|22,6|35|43|55|60|72,5|75
vs. 2 eras ago|/|/|+17|+20|+20|+15|+15
vs. 3 eras ago|/|/|/|/|/|+30,5|/
vs. 1 era ago |+10|+15|/|/|/|/|/|
vs. 1 era ago, related unit|/|+9|+8|+14,5|+5|+10|+5

Get 9,3 str per era, at least for the data point we have now. If we know more, it may be closer to 10.

Sadly we have very little info on cost, but here is a ver preliminary preview:

|Ancient|Classic|Medieval|Renaissance|Industrial|Modern|Atomic
avg. cost|38,8|75,333|120|/|/|436|540

cost analysis needs to be done on a case-by-case basis since we dont have enough data. This also ignores strategic resources.

|increase factor|era difference
warrior vs. swordman|2,33|1
spearman vs. swordman|1,4|1
slinger vs. archer|1,56|1
chariot vs. horsemen|1,25|1
catapult vs. archer|2,41|1
horseman vs. knight|1,94|1
catapult vs. crossbow|1,28|1
chariot vs. knight|2,4|2
archer vs. crossbow|3,08|2
slinger vs. crossbow|4,8|3
knight vs tank|4|3
swordman vs. infantry|6,14|4
crossbow vs. machine gun|4,5|4
spearman vs. AT|8|5

*very* roughly you need to spend ~1.5-1,6 times as much production for an unit in the next era.

Now to corps and armys.

We know that a corps has 10 strength more than the individual units. Nothing known about armys, I suspect that both an additonal +5 or +10 is possible.

That would mean that you need to spend 2 times as much production to get 10 more strength, a bad tradeoff compared to the advance you get via tech.

However, we also know that it possible to build corps and armys directly. In the last stream, it would have cost 19 turns to build an infantry unit, but only 29 turns for an infantry corps and 43 turns for an army. 29/19=1,54; 43/19=2,23. Here we have our magical 1,5-1,6 again. Having the ability to build corps is the same as having access to a unit one era further along.

Its a bit of an rambleing, but hopefully you got something out of it.

Maybe someone can look over it theorycraft which units are stronger or weaker compared to their cost and previous units ? I'm going to bed now.

 

[playshogi]

Will corps and armies have more defensive hit points? Also, will a corps be able to attack twice in the same turn and an army 3 times?

 

[Babri]

Will corps and armies have more defensive hit points? Also, will a corps be able to attack twice in the same turn and an army 3 times?

No. Corps & armies basically function like normal units with an extra strength advantage.

Sent from my HTC Desire 820s dual sim using Tapatalk

 

[Mort_Q]

Can a corps be split again?

 

[Xur]

If you played civ3, then you'd know how powerful an army is. While the cost might not make sence at a glance, then the extra hitpoints alone is extremely powerful for a frontline unit - a dead unit is worth less than an alive unit

I dont know how it works in civ6, but here's how it works in civ3: http://www.civfanatics.com/civ3/strategy/armies.php

 

[stealth_nsk]

If you played civ3, then you'd know how powerful an army is. While the cost might not make sence at a glance, then the extra hitpoints alone is extremely powerful for a frontline unit - a dead unit is worth less than an alive unit

I dont know how it works in civ6, but here's how it works in civ3: http://www.civfanatics.com/civ3/strategy/armies.php

It works totally different, as there are no additional HP, but there's additional strength, plus combat changed from stacks to 1UPT.

 

[Stringer1313]

It works totally different, as there are no additional HP, but there's additional strength, plus combat changed from stacks to 1UPT.

Do we know for certain that there's no additional HP? That's the one thing that make them so powerful in Civ 3 but I couldn't tell from the video whether Civ 6 ones get extra HP or not

 

[Xur]

It works totally different, as there are no additional HP, but there's additional strength, plus combat changed from stacks to 1UPT.

So it takes less damage - how is that different than having more health and taking normal damage? It's basicly the same.

 

[stealth_nsk]

So it takes less damage - how is that different than having more health and taking normal damage? It's basicly the same.

And deals more damage, which is a big difference, especially in 1UPT.

 

[dturtle1]

Because Civ6 Combat works as a relative system(in this case difference) rather than absolute, it requires only a strength value with max HP always being 100. Strength is both offensive and defensive, meaning an extra 10 strength increases not only the damage it deals but also its effective HP. Note also in Civ6 case this exponential as well. A difference of 10 is > than 2 *(difference of 5). A difference of 25 i think 1 shots.