Upgrading to UU, question

[asurkin]

Quick question, for America for example, if I upgrade a Warrior eventually to a "minuteman" will I receive the UU bonus, or do I have to produce the "minuteman" once it is available?

 

[chazzycat]

it doesn't work for that specific example because you can't upgrade warriors to musketmen, but in general the answer is yes.

 

[asurkin]

Yes this i know, that is why I said eventually., but thanks for the reply helps me a lot!!

 

[chazzycat]

Yes this i know, that is why I said eventually., but thanks for the reply helps me a lot!!

even eventually, a warrior will never upgrade to a musketman/minutemen. They are off the upgrade path.

 

[asurkin]

I just looked it up. Thank you for pointing that out. I am new to the game and this site. Thanks for for the answer anyway.

 

[Teagen]

I think it goes archer-type units into minutemen. Which is actually kinda ******** because it makes their ranged upgrades useless.

 

[The Pilgrim]

I think it goes archer-type units into minutemen. Which is actually kinda ******** because it makes their ranged upgrades useless.

No, it goes nothing into minuteman. Minuteman replaces musketman, one of the most useless units in the game. Exactly for this reason. You cannot upgrade earlier units into it. And only two technologies later it becomes obsolete with researching Rifling.

 

[Babri]

I think it goes archer-type units into minutemen. Which is actually kinda ******** because it makes their ranged upgrades useless.

In vanilla, you cannot upgrade any unit to a muskets. This somewhat devalues the muskets. Similarly units cannot upgrade to Lancers. All archers & warriors/swords/pikes upgrade to rifles.

 

[Mesix]

I always thought that it was a waste to have upgrated ranged units which become Riflemen and lose thier ranged upgrades. This is especially true for China where I use the UU extensively and have highly upgraded ranged units (on account of attacking twice per turn). It seems that there should be later era ranged units (and scouts too for that matter).

 

[The Pilgrim]

I always thought that it was a waste to have upgrated ranged units which become Riflemen and lose thier ranged upgrades. This is especially true for China where I use the UU extensively and have highly upgraded ranged units (on account of attacking twice per turn). It seems that there should be later era ranged units (and scouts too for that matter).

I agree. Crossbows with logistics promotion are very strong. It's better to kick out brand new rifles than upgrading them. Before mech. infantry I wouldn't bother.

 

[General Awesome]

Perhaps someone should make a mod that adds units for Xbowmen to upgrade into, such as long-rifle armed skirmishers and then snipers?

 

[Spatzimaus]

There are a variety of ways to deal with that ranged unit issue. Thalassicus' mod handles it where it your archer has the Open attack bonus, then when it reaches Rifleman that promotion will be spontaneously replaced with the melee Open promotion (Shock), and similar for the Rough terrain chain. Logistics would still be useful for a melee unit, as it lets you attack twice per turn and move after attacking (i.e. the same as Blitz for a 2-movement unit), or a similar mechanism can just replace Logistics with Blitz and Range with, say, Mobility.

In my own mods, one of the things I'm going to be doing soon (not yet, but soon) is to remove the Barrage/Accuracy promotions entirely, and just add the ranged attack bonuses into Shock and Drill directly. Obviously this'll help with the Crossbow->Rifleman upgrade, but it was really done for two other reasons: I have a couple custom combat classes that have both melee and ranged attacks (and wanted to add ranged attacks to a few units in existing classes, like Armor), and I really need those promotion slots as the game limits you to ~50 new promotions before it starts breaking.

Balance-wise, there's not much point in adding ranged infantry units once you get Artillery (which can outrange cities) and air units. But I've still found some uses; I added a Helicopter-type future unit that has a range-1 ranged attack, just so that it wouldn't take any damage when it attacked an enemy, which was essential for a skirmisher unit. So I suppose earlier versions of the same would work well, although you'd have to up the movement of the skirmisher units to make them truly valuable.

 

[TyBoy]

I've actually come to think that the whole combined promotion and upgrade system in 4&5 is a mistake for this reason and a return to something closer to the system from 1-3 would be better (with 3 being better than 1&2).

At first glance it seems like a really interesting feature (there's definitely something psychological that draws people to that sort of cultivating in video games). The effect of it is to make upgrade paths (something with basically no real world correlation) possibly the single most important characteristic of a unit which leads to a fair amount of dissatisfaction. It also heavily devalues any unit which lies out of a few paths that last throughout the game, which makes it hard for combat styles to change through the game the way they probably should. 1upt has accentuated the problem even more as 2 green units become even less of a replacement for 1 veteran.

Spitballing from thoughts that occured to me just now; If they combined something close to the system from 3 with promotions you could keep promotions but have any single unit limited to 2 or 3 of them. That would keep the interesting part of them while limiting the power of units that have been fighting for 200 turns.

 

[woodshadows]

what's with tanks upgrading to modern armor for 10 gold?

 

[CultureManiac]

Perhaps someone should make a mod that adds units for Xbowmen to upgrade into, such as long-rifle armed skirmishers and then snipers?

Snipers - great idea! I've also been frustrated getting highly trained crossbows that become "ordinary" riflemen. This would let them keep the extra range.

BTW, in Afghanistan there were two confirmed kills from distances of 2.5 kilometers (1.5 miles), one by a British sniper and one by a Canadian. Snipers are a real part of warfare and have been for a long time.

 

[The Pilgrim]

Snipers - great idea!

Indeed.

 

[The_Quasar]

imho it makes more sense to upgrade crossbows to cannon...

 

[adultswim88]

Snipers would be an interesting unit, but with a lot of stipulations. I could see them doing really strong damage to non-armored units, light damage to armored units, and little if any damage to a city. Maybe even percentage changes depending on the targets terrain. They would take bonus damage when receiving direct attacks, maybe less from range.

Thoughts?

 

[Fluffball]

For snipers to be of any point they would need to be able to hide and infiltrate.e.g. they could only be seen under certain circumstances. Units would have to deliberately search for them, enemy snipers would have a bonus in detecting them and terrain would provide a bonus to non detection rather than the traditional defensive bonuses.

As for the damage they do, they should be deadly against all targets. Non armoured targets are obvious but there are anti-armour sniper rifles and snipers are notouriously deadly in built up areas.
This would be offset by, if they are detected and thus can be attacked they are effectively defenseless.
Essentially the glass cannon principle.

Currently i don't wish to actually see snipers implemented though as i forsee them being designed as badly as submarines and therefore just as useless rather than an interesting unit.