v157: England only building range units

[AlextheGr8]

I'm about 100 turns into a game, and England seems to only build range units. Specifically Longbowmen and Catapults. They are attacking my cities with 6 catapults and 6 longbowmen. Of course they are doing a great job but they obviously cannot capture the city without regular skirmish units. Never seen them only attack with range units before.

 

[wobuffet]

They have a high Ranged flavor because of their Longbowman UU, which in my games has usually worked out well for them. Obviously this is problematic when they're on the attack, as you point out, but I'm not sure what Thal can do about this...

 

[Txurce]

Lots of civs do this, although civs with ranged UUs are more likely to do so. It's not on purpose, just the way it sometimes works out. Playing against England in v156, I encountered five scouts at one point. Now that's less likely to be coincidence, since I see others (but not all) doing it as well.

 

[Thalassicus]

What the game really needs is attack groups. Build a levy, catapult, archer, strategic unit, and move+attack together as a group. Those groups could then link up into larger groups for army maneuvers. It would ensure the AI always has a good mix of units. I'm relatively certain the game builds units individually right now, instead of part of a group. If random variables go a certain way they end up building too much of one unit type.

 

[Seek]

That would be amazing, and seemingly simple to code (to my layman's eyes anyway).

 

[Gamewizard]

That is one thing Firaxis has promised with GaK. From the front page of the official website:

"World Domination
The fight for world domination is now more dynamic than ever before. The Gods and Kings expansion features a reworked combat system and AI that puts more emphasis on a balanced army composition. The new system allows your lines to stand longer than they could before, so you, as a player, can make smarter tactical decisions without worrying about a single unlucky roll of the dice."

I have my fingers and toes crossed for this one.

 

[Thalassicus]

Notice the vague wording, it's marketer-speak. It could mean a lot of things.

It might refer to their changes to AI flavor values for units. Or it could mean the nerfs to strategic units, which encourages players to build more non-strategic units... which could technically be called a more "balanced army." I don't like the approach they took. In vem I made strategic units more rare, important, and distinctive. They instead made strategic/nonstrategic units closer in strength, while keeping the excessive strategic resource availability, which just makes armies more bland. I don't intend to adopt that change.