unit upgrade chart, with comments for improvement

[Fabio1701]

Hi all,

I just made a unit upgrade chart because I could not find any on the internet. Attached, please feel free to post all over the reddits, itnerwebz, tumblrs, MySpaces, tinders and all the things kids today are using.

However the reason I am putting it here in Suggestions is because it would help with the following discussion about unit balance and realism.

If you take a look is that there seems to be some units missing in some eras, and I find that in playing the lack of units means taht the more advanced civ gets a far to easy rid plastering a unit two eras behind. Here is my advice:

-Between musket man (Renaissance) and Infantryman (Modern Era) there should be a Industrial Era melee unit. Call it a rifleman?

-Between Pikeman and AT Crew something? its three eras of having pikemen around feels too long. on the otehr hand, there was no real anti-cav unit designed against the industrial era cavalry was there?

-Ranger should move an Era earlier, to Renaissance. That would make more sence to simulate the conquistators or the rangers which expanded the American West. With gunpowder? And then maybe a Info Era upgrade to Ranger, Commando?

-Between Frigate (Renaissance) and Battelship (Modern Era) there should be Dreadnought (Industrial Era).

-Destroyers should move earlier to Modern Era, and upgrade to something better in atomic or info era? Corvette? Littoral Class Ship?

all I got for now. Also, seriously? Computers gave us no military units? WTH?

 

[UWHabs]

Thanks!

You can see from this a little of the design. Most of the time, units go 2 eras until a replacement. Siege+Melee come together in the same era. Anti-Cav and Heavy Cav come together in the same eras.

Agree on most of the changes mentioned:
-I think there should be one main melee unit per era. They need a new medieval one (longsword or macemen in previous games), a new industrial one (rifleman), and a new atomic era one (essentially something to differentiate WW1 and WW2 infantry, maybe marines?)
-As you mentioned, probably need a good industrial-era anti-cavalry unit. Given that there wasn't really anything that was used at that point, I think Cavalry should just have a smaller combat value in that era, but have a default bonus against injured units (ie. 55+7 instead of 62). That way, Cavalry would still be able to wipe the field in that time, but you need to soften the other army first otherwise they're really not any better than muskets or rifles.
-Destroyers should definitely come in the same era as submarines, and yeah, an upgrade to Corvettes would probably make sense.

 

[TomKQT]

A nice graph, thank you sir
Your ideas of additional units and transfer of some existing sounds like exactly from they did in the datadiscs of CivV (all those Great War Infantry, Triplanes etc.). So I'm hoping for something similar in Civ6 after few months.

A huge flaw in the current design is that you can be (this happened to me multiple times with different units) 1 turn from finishing a catapult in your city. But you research Metal Casting and have no Niter connected. What happens? The city stops making the catapult, you get nothing back and you cannot make any siege unit.
Your civilization is too technically advanced to make those stupid capatults, so they won't even bother finishing the one almost completed. They know how to make much better weapons - bombards! Well, we don't have Niter, we just heard about it. So, we in fact cannot make bombards. But don't even mention catapults to us, that's way too old-school for us!

This must be fixed, it makes absolutely no sense from realism nor gameplay point of view.

 

[Fabio1701]

Your civilization is too technically advanced to make those stupid capatults, so they won't even bother finishing the one almost completed. They know how to make much better weapons - bombards! Well, we don't have Niter, we just heard about it. So, we in fact cannot make bombards. But don't even mention catapults to us, that's way too old-school for us!

goodness I didnt even realize this could happen! disgraceful! I woudl liek at least to fish the catapult so I can upgrade it when I can find nitre

 

[Elucidus]

And I know one unit that would not exist without computers, the F-117. It requires constant calculations to stay aloft. I guess that is what happens when you try to put a D4 in the sky.