Unit strength overhaul

[little_cyclone]

i'd expect most bombards to die.

Then why bother building them? Again, it turns into attrition. There has to be a better mousetrap

they are only supposed to hurt the stack, so that you can kill the stack with minimal loss of other units

Which is why I'm bemoaning the loss of our ranged attack bombardment. The "direct attack" method of arty/siege introduced in vanilla Civ 4 is simply ludicrous.

i think spears have been bumped back to 4

It's definitely 3, just hopped into RoM and checked And Pikes (at 9 strength) are a ways off... Maybe there should be a unit in the middle? or an increase to spearman strength to offset the long haul btw the two..

 

[Thorongil]

The Spearman comes so early that handing him a higher strength of 3 would make it quite overpowered in my opinion. Another unit would have to fill this gap.

 

[0100010]

Please keep Spearman at 3 (although not at the cost of a not working BarbCiv/Start as Minors component) As I've read Zaps comments on the problem in RevDCM thread it is a problem with the UnitAI assignment. I'm not sure how the unit strength would affect this, but the real solution of course is to fix the problem not change the str as a workaround (if it has any effect) But as I said, if upping the str fixes it, then I can live with it.

As stated by many others, Horse Archers, Elephant Riders, War Elephants, Heavy Swords and Trebs are all too powerful. (Mounted Infantry a unit from Horse breeding which comes after horseback riding, is less powerful than the horseback riding enabled Horse Archer)

Please disallow Barbarians from spawning Elephant units, certainly not while they are too powerful and even if adjusted, it just seems dumb to see Barbarian Elephant units spawning on a continent which has no Ivory.

 

[zappara]

Pikeman, Heavy Pikeman, Heavy Swordsman, Trebuchet + few other units have been tweaked for v2.61. Spearman is again str 4 as I thought it would fix a problem with RevDCM but v2.61 you can't enable revolution or barbarian civ components due to unsolved bugs so I guess this change is obsolete now - v2.61 is already packed and I'm uploading it today so further spearman changes will have to wait to next version.

 

[Soddball]

I haven't had a chance to install 2.6beta yet, but reading through the 2.6 discussion I noticed Kalimakus' concern about Spearmen being short lived in their usefulness. So I was wondering if you could make the Spearman (str3 - armed with a sharpened stick) upgrade strength based on what types of resources are available, similar to the faster build bonuses that you had in 2.5.

Hroth

The improved penetrative ability of a spear tipped with iron, or bronze, as opposed to flint, is minimal. The important changes are the amount of time taken to work a single spearhead, and the degree of skill required to manufacture it. Flint knapping takes years to learn and decades to master while iron working takes much less.

 

[romelus]

Then why bother building them? Again, it turns into attrition. There has to be a better mousetrap

Which is why I'm bemoaning the loss of our ranged attack bombardment. The "direct attack" method of arty/siege introduced in vanilla Civ 4 is simply ludicrous.

there has to be some kind of attrition. you are attacking a large stack of strong units which are in good defensive terrain, no balanced game would allow you to destroy them with little or no loss of your own.

that is also the reason i disable ranged fire and opportunity fire myself even before zap disabled them in the official version. if either of those were enabled, it was possible to kill an extreme number of units with almost no loss - you just needed a huge stack of siege.

maybe you just don't like taking any loss at all, but i play to get a challenge. to each his own.

 

[zappara]

Now that you all have been playing v2.6 for a while, what do you think about the unit strengths overally, does it increase too much on later era units or do you feel it's in good balance?

I was bit scared when after the modifications the unit strengths increased from max 70 to 360.

 

[zappara]

Silence in this thread is, I guess, a good thing?

 

[Magma]

I fairly like the system. Only thing I noticed is that there's a big leap between the ages - I know it's intentional but maybe it does give the scientific civilizations too much of an upper hand. For an example a longbowman would be used in both offense in defense because it's simply better than any classic units (Exception of the evil elephants) Not sure if it's bad or good, but I'd say it should be handled carefully.

 

[Kalimakhus]

Expanding the over all range of units strenghs is a good idea in general in the sense that it gives a chance for bigger variety. However between eras jumps don't really make a lot of sense. There is no real reasn why a man with a mace is more than twice stronger than a man with an Axe. In the end of the day both are human beings using manual killing tools. In history more advanced nations would have an edge but this was never the sole factor that guaranteed victory. In many situation well advanced armies lost battles and whole wars to almost primitive opponent due to several tactical and logistic factors. In game terms I expect a maceman to fail attacking an axeman with woodmanI and II fortified on a forested hill. When macemen were 8str this was the case but when they are 11 str + 50% against melee units the gree inexperienced maceman will always kill the poor axeman. In my last game I watched a large Monty stack of cats and jaguars getting annihilated at the foot of a city guarded with two longbows. Sure I was happy that my beelining feudalism payed out but it still made no sense. I haven't tried a very high difficulty with RoM2.6x yet. and it is true that the AI fares miserably even on higher difficulties in RoM but usually on Monarch+ the AI will keep the tech lead for some time. On immortal and deity the player may never get the tech lead. Winning wars on these difficulties meant using your units intelligently to counter the more advanced units the AI may through at you. Mostly it depend on promoting your units properly and choosing city placement and shock points that work for you. Stopping a large SoD coming your way needed a large number of cats and horse archers. Cats will soften the stack, HAs will flank damage or kill the siege units in the stack. Axes will kill at least some units. I am afraid that with new strengths cats won't harm the units in the stack almost at all. Horse Archers will fail flanking the siege units for they aren't likely to survive attacking maces or worse pikes.
Once again I haven't experienced such situations first hand so and iformed report of someone who tried playing on a high difficulty would be much better. I only played on prince (my comfort-zone difficulty for exploring new modifications or for faster testing). I was naturally the most advanced for almost the entire game time. I got once dog-piled by four AIs and managed in keeping my ground against them all. Simply my longbows were too much for any stack thrown at them. When a while later I upgraded my Axes and Swords to maces I was able to take cities with tons of units without fully taking down their defenses to 0%. All my maces were promoted with CRI, II and III. I never needed any other promotions because in-field they were unmatched anyway.

Now, do I mean to say that the whole new system is not balanced? Of course I don't. Further thorough testing is needed. Tweaking special modifiers for units and trying different combination of them can enhance the system and give the player a chance to work more on his tactics.

Using a larger range of str values as I mentioned before is a good thing in its own. It allows having units with intermediate str values or creating some promotions that give a boost to units str. An armorer (or a building available later in classical era) can give a promotion that adds +1 str to melee units built in the city. Arena or Colosseum can give similar promotions to mounted units. Archery range can be pushed to an earlier tech allowing Archers to be promoted. Many things can be done to enhance the new system, polish it, and unleash its full potentials. In short we certainly don't need to go back to vanilla str values which were too limited.

 

[0100010]

Reduce the strength of the Horse Archer (and all corresponding UUs) back down to 6.
Reduce the Elephant Rider strength down to 6 or 7.
Reduce the War Elephant (and all corresponding UUs) back down to 8 or 9, also perhaps add Military Training as a additional tech pre-req.
Increase the cost of Trained Dogs if they are going to remain at strength 3. (currently they are cheaper than archers)

 

[generalstaff]

Reduce the strength of the Horse Archer (and all corresponding UUs) back down to 6.

I have not had any balance problems with Horse Archers. In my current game, I do not have access to Horse and I am successfully countering them. In another game, I did use them, but I still needed siege weapons to capture cities. I admit, that I have not been able to test them in field combat yet, which I could image would create a balance issue back when Spearmen were Strength 3.

Reduce the War Elephant (and all corresponding UUs) back down to 8 or 9, also perhaps add Military Training as a additional tech pre-req.

I agree. There is something weird about them being as strong as knights, but having early access to that level of power. Adding the Military Training pre-req is a great idea for both historical and balance reasons.

 

[konradcabral]

Reduce the strength of the Horse Archer (and all corresponding UUs) back down to 6.
Reduce the Elephant Rider strength down to 6 or 7.
Reduce the War Elephant (and all corresponding UUs) back down to 8 or 9, also perhaps add Military Training as a additional tech pre-req.
Increase the cost of Trained Dogs if they are going to remain at strength 3. (currently they are cheaper than archers)

About War Elephants: Totally agree with the additional pre-req. It's not so easy to tame an elephant as a horse.
About Dogs: Agree too. My enemy in last game saved a city because of these fast building unit. And I didn't like it.

 

[Carwyn]

Now that you all have been playing v2.6 for a while, what do you think about the unit strengths overally, does it increase too much on later era units or do you feel it's in good balance?

I was bit scared when after the modifications the unit strengths increased from max 70 to 360.

Haven't really been playing it yet, waiting for the bugs to be dealt with and some report of multiplayer functionality. For now I'm staying with 2.52, which is stable and fun for us.

 

[zappara]

Elephant Rider is now 5 str and War Elephant 8 (or 9 for some UU). Horse Archer is now medieval era unit as it becomes available from Mounted Archery, str still 8 (longbowman available at that time as well).

 

[zappara]

One area in RoM promotion system is bit unfinished is the modern/future era unit's promotions - there's still some room left for developing various bonuses against different unitcombat groups, for example at the moment none of the promotion lines give bonuses versus clone units if I remember correctly. So Hi-tech, Clones, Tracked, Wheeled, Gunpowder, Mech, Dreadnought groups could have promotions versus other groups...

 

[Lance of Llanwy]

Elephant Rider is now 5 str and War Elephant 8 (or 9 for some UU). Horse Archer is now medieval era unit as it becomes available from Mounted Archery, str still 8 (longbowman available at that time as well).

I was just going to complain about this, actually, but that ought to do it. There's something wrong when Horse Archers are overrunning a city defended by spearmen, even given some siege support. Took only four horse archers to take out three spearmen. Fortified, Combat II, Martial Arts spearmen. Oh well, I had elephants, so...you might say it worked out in the end

 

[bovinespy]

I'm new to this mod, but I've been playing 2.62 nonstop for the past week, and my biggest problem is with Spearmen. Simply put, as currently implemented, Spearmen nullify any ancient chariot-warring strategies. This really hurts the fun factor of civs with chariot-based UUs, like Egypt and the Hittites. I would suggest re-introducing a resource requirement (presumably metal/obsidian) for their construction.

Alternatively, their strength should be reduced to 3 (which is, as I understand, what it was in previous versions of RoM). Even leaving them at 4, but requiring resources, still leaves the problem that other ancient strength-boosted UUs (thinking primarily of Mali here) lose much of their impact when matched up against 4-strength spearmen, which the AI often uses for city defense.

If their strength were reduced to 3, that would serve to highlight the need for an intermediate-strength version of anti-mounted infantry between spears and pikes (as many others have noted).

 

[konradcabral]

I'm new to this mod, but I've been playing 2.62 nonstop for the past week, and my biggest problem is with Spearmen. Simply put, as currently implemented, Spearmen nullify any ancient chariot-warring strategies.

I think 4 is high, but 3 is low. So I propose to reduce to 3, and slightly increase its boni.

 

[Cruor]

Hi, I'm a kinda new to RoM, I think its an awesome mod. I have only finnished one game on Emperor which ended in the industrial age, and now I'm on a new one, huge europe map, immortal.

I have some imput on units and unit strengths that I have seen:

The siege weapons, especially the Bombard, are too strong in the field. They should be good city siegers, and they are, but Its kinda rediculous that a mailed knight is 16 and a Bombard that fires stone cannon balls, cannot be rotated with ease, and fires what... once every 2 minutes is str 17? All siege units should recive minus 50% str on defence vs all non siege attackers, or at very least all mounted/fast units need + 50% attack vs siege. For example, mailed knights need + 50% vs bombard... TBH I even see them beating napoleonic/american revolution era cannons if they werent guarded. Id see horse archers beating them for that matter if they flanked them.

Mailed knights are very powerful, and I think they need a + gold cost, as you have with some other units. I believe in real life heavy cavalry/knights were super effective, but only lords/nobels could afford the armor/weapons/horses/support so it was hard to field many of them. This was a great idea in the mod that I think civ 4 should of shipped with... I just think the AI need to unterstand the fact that certain units cost more, we don't want to bankrupt the AI and make the game easy. I think tanks/planes/battleships/aircraft carriers need an even higher + gold cost then they currently have.

I'm not sure I understand how the gunpowder infanty work, let me get this strait: Arb's are the first with the crappy matchlock musket. Then we have musketmen who have a slightly more effective flintlock, this is like 1700's era. Then, we have the rifleman, this is civil war era, long range, accurite, hits hard, but still single shot and manual reload right? maybe 3 shots a minute. Then, here is where you lose me... we get the semi automatic weapons advance (im thinking bolt actions and semi autos like the springfield) and we get no new infantry? Then we get automatic weapons (im thinking M16/AK47) to get the ww1/ww2 era infantry? I dont understand. IMO, it should be semi automatic weapons to enable the 34 str infantry.

I think modern Grenader should be removed, it makes no sense to me. Before, there was this to counter that such as pikemen vs mounted, but once we had rifles the only way to beat it was with your own rifles... at very least the unit should be changed to storm trooper or something.

I have not played the future era yet, but I have seen that Mechs/Dreadnaught from the Next War scenario are there. I hope they do not work in the same way, super powerful units you can only build a few of, because the AI doesnt understand how to use them. A human player can send them along with a medic, taking city after city with ease. The AI doesnt know to counter them with its own super units, or to make them a priority airstrike/nuke etc target, thus messing the game up and making it too easy.

My last comment for now is the future are is a little too sci fi for me. Mechs for example, will never happen. A big tall robot is too big a target, has too many weak points, and would sink into the ground. This is a personal pref but I would like an option to turn off the future age, meaning the last air units should be stealth and last ground vehicle be a tracked tank.

Again, awesome mod, it makes Civ 4 worth playing again... I hope the Civ 5 devs are taking some notes.