[GS] What to do with Helicopters...

[Sostratus]

So after years of thinking about civ6 all the time, I am finally tinkering with modding. I was looking at units to update for a simple combat rebalance mod, and I noticed that Helicopters now require aluminum maintenance.

They are currently 82 strength and cost 600.

(A modern armor is 90 str and cost 680.)

At first I was just going to set their strength to 85, (I made Modern_AT 85 as well) and let them be, but when i saw their aluminum usage, I felt maybe there is an opportunity to make the light_cav class shine a little.
Aluminum is otherwise only used in air units, which are so overwhelmingly powerful that helicopters would be a waste of the resource. (For example, a Jet Fighter has 110/110 vs... 82. Or 99 with a Helo army. Not even comparable.)
I could just make them use oil and call it a day, or I could keep the aluminum and make them like, 90 and add a +10 when attacking or something (once I figure out how to work with custom modifiers, this one could just be a hijack of the berserker's modifier.) Then they'd be elite units functioning somewhat like jets but without the AA vulnerability.

Brain trust!
@acluewithout
@Boris Gudenuf (You might have a good sense of just what we are using those Apaches for on the battlefield)

 

[acluewithout]

Hello!

I've had a few thoughts on Helicopters. Some of them might even be coherent...

First. Thing with the light cav line is that it's sort of "resource lite". Pre GS, you got the first two light cav units with just horses (i.e. horsemen and cavalry) and horses were visible at the start of the game; and then the third unit needed no resources (copters). With GS, you can still sort of see this design, in that horses can be revealed early and are the only resource for most light cav. It's only helicopters that start requiring a difficult resource.

Second. IRL, Helicopters are pretty good against Tanks, and I think giving them a bonus v tanks would be interesting. It would give the light cav line a different dynamic in the late game.

Not sure if either of those turn into really concrete recommendations. I think an easy fix would be to just get rid of the resource requirement entirely. I don't think giving them oil is the way forward - Melee and Heavy Cav sort of consistently have the same resource, so you have to choose between them, or invest heavily in Iron, Niter or Oil. Making Helicopters use oil would sort of cross the streams, if you see what I mean.

If you remove the resource requirement entirely, you could leave helicopters relatively weak, but give them bonuses against e.g. tanks or units in open ground or something, so helicopters a more situationally handy.

Ultimately though, I guess how you balance choppers is going to depend on how you re-balance units like tanks and infantry.

A maybe more complicated option would be to make Aluminium a building resource not a maintenance resource, so you just need x Aluminium to build Planes, and then make Helicopters still use Aluminium but make the cost must lower. The helicopters would still sort of be resource lite, but would also share a resource with planes.

 

[Sostratus]

A maybe more complicated option would be to make Aluminium a building resource not a maintenance resource, so you just need x Aluminium to build Planes, and then make Helicopters still use Aluminium but make the cost must lower. The helicopters would still sort of be resource lite, but would also share a resource with planes.

I have thought about doing this, but it almost feels unfair because then anyone with an aluminum mine or two could get a massive airforce. Those jets were balanced around limited aluminum.

To be sure, I am definitely going to make aluminum mines provide 3 instead of 2- it's the only consumed resource that provides 2 and it just feels so cramped. You can't even fill an aerodrome with one mine + the policy + corp lib govt. And an actual mine should provide at least as much as aerospace contractors...

The only late game changes I've made are the ones I always harp about- AT/Modern AT to 75/85, and infantry to 75. Tanks and Modern Armor still at 80 & 90.
It's highly likely I will also buff machine guns + specops to keep up, although I still gotta work out how the recon line fits into things.

So leaving helos at 85 but using aluminum would them just a worse, more expensive tank (since alum>>oil thanks to airforce.) At 85 and resourceless they would be your fast pillagers, countered by a modern AT or heavy cav. That is likely the closest to traditional design.

I don't want to just make them essentially "better modern AT" with an anti tank bonus, although actually giving them the berserker's +atk/-def trait would work very nicely. This is intended to be a very simple rebalance that sticks as true to the game fundamentals as possible, but helicopters have really been giving me trouble since there's just no reason to use them right now.

A couple other changes include generally re-balancing things to round numbers (except industrial era mounted) with pikes @ 45, for example, i moved knights and coursers to 50 and 45. I also made Rough Riders a unique Cuirassier since that's what the unit was before we had cuirs. I also have been working out some details of early game. Chariots are 30, sword/horse 35. The only deviation from the trends I am making is spears to 30 so they can be used in classical, but then that makes barb camps much tougher early; so I'll figure out something there. Most likely either warriors get +5 vs barbs, or if I can work out how to make a barb spear that stays at 25 (still learnign how to do things.)

I would eventually like most unique units that don't replace anything to be something you can upgrade into, but I haven't yet worked out how to do it without actually having a base unit (don't want players to see a 'longsword' entry in the civilopedia that you can never have.)

 

[acluewithout]

All good points.

I think your instincts are right - just focus on tweaking a few numbers for now, and see how that looks and plays first. Probably not worth going to far down the unit balance rabbit hole either when FXS may well tweak much of this anyway.

I think I agree that removing the resource requirement for helicopters entirely, and then rebalancing them around that might, be the easiest solution.

 

[Boris Gudenuf]

Couple of 'background' observations on Helicopters . . .

If you assume about 1950 as 'first use' in quantity for Helicopters, then until about 1970 their primary use was strictly for Reconnaissance and Transportation to the Battlefield for light infantry/recon units.
The next 25 years (1970 to 1995, roughly) saw the Rise of the Gunship armed with rapid-fire cannon and short range missiles. This period also saw the vulnerability of Helicopters emphasized, when the Soviet discovered in Afghanistan that even 'armored' helicopters were extremely vulnerable to light AA (20 - 25mm automatic guns) and shoulder-fired AA missiles
From approximately 1995 to the present day Helicopters have increasingly become platforms for long range missiles, drones, cruise missiles, and 'fire and forget' missiles that tremendously increase the Helicopter's survivability while giving them more long-range reconnaissance and attack capability. "Stealth" (relatively quiet) helicopters have also become the Preferred method of inserting Special Forces and other dedicated ground reconnaissance and targeting units.

That means the Helicopter has several 'bonus attributes' not represented in the game:
1. Transportation. In keeping with the Civ VI/V mechanism of not actually requiring Sea transports, air-drop transports, or any other kind of purely 'carrying' unit, I suggest that once you have built your first Helicopter, ALL your Recon units may 'air drop' - be lifted from any tile to any other tile within 4 tiles (the Helicopter's 'range').
2. Aerial reconnaissance/observation. Helicopters should really have an Extended Vision Range Except around any AA unit, which restricts where they can fly.
3. Range Attack. Helicopters in the Information Era really have a Ranged attack, based on their ability to launch 'over the horizon' missiles and guide them to target using satellite or drone spotting. This and their 'melee' attack factor should also get an Anti-Tank/Anti-Cav bonus.

All of this could be included with a specialized Helicopter Promotion Tree, or the Ranged Attack capability could be a Tech Promotion like that used for the GDR, available only with Tech: Guidance Systems or Tech: Satellites.

As for Resources, Helicopter airframes, generally, are only a fraction of the weight of a modern Jet/hypersonic Fighter or Bomber, so making Helicopters Resource-free for maintenance Cost or even Resource Free to build is a perfectly defendable option. On the other hand, Helicopters require a huge maintenance/logistic infrastructure to keep operating, so jacking up the Gold cost to Maintain is also a perfectly defendable option.

 

[Sostratus]

All of this could be included with a specialized Helicopter Promotion Tree, or the Ranged Attack capability could be a Tech Promotion like that used for the GDR, available only with Tech: Guidance Systems or Tech: Satellites.

As for Resources, Helicopter airframes, generally, are only a fraction of the weight of a modern Jet/hypersonic Fighter or Bomber, so making Helicopters Resource-free for maintenance Cost or even Resource Free to build is a perfectly defendable option. On the other hand, Helicopters require a huge maintenance/logistic infrastructure to keep operating, so jacking up the Gold cost to Maintain is also a perfectly defendable option.

While considering making the helicopter work like a Persian Immortal - ranged attack on a melee unit- I have learned the lessons of civ5: a hypermobile unit with a ranged attack (even with 1 range) is absolutely going to shred everything in human hands. The Camel Archer alone made arabia top tier in civ5, and anyone who has played around the the warak'aq or Pitati in civ6 knows what can happen.

We have:
Modern Armor (Fast, Strong, Needs Fuel, Weakness to AT)
Modern AT (Advantage vs Armor, weakness to melee)
Mech Inf (Advantage vs AT, Needs Fuel)
Helicopters (Fast, Needs Fuel, Weakness to AT)

Removing their fuel needs would seem to make that equation work, but so would making them strong somehow. If I can get some help in the future playing around with such a combat tweak, and the consensus is helicopters are just too versatile, then i will look at fuel use + some conditional strength.

 

[acluewithout]

While considering making the helicopter work like a Persian Immortal - ranged attack on a melee unit- I have learned the lessons of civ5: a hypermobile unit with a ranged attack (even with 1 range) is absolutely going to shred everything in human hands. The Camel Archer alone made arabia top tier in civ5, and anyone who has played around the the warak'aq or Pitati in civ6 knows what can happen.

We have:
Modern Armor (Fast, Strong, Needs Fuel, Weakness to AT)
Modern AT (Advantage vs Armor, weakness to melee)
Mech Inf (Advantage vs AT, Needs Fuel)
Helicopters (Fast, Needs Fuel, Weakness to AT)

Removing their fuel needs would seem to make that equation work, but so would making them strong somehow. If I can get some help in the future playing around with such a combat tweak, and the consensus is helicopters are just too versatile, then i will look at fuel use + some conditional strength.

@Sostratus That all sounds pretty good.

I’m happy to help with some of the coding if you want, particularly if it’s just SQL stuff.

I hesitate to suggest this, because I realise you’re trying to keep this simple, but I think one thing that might help with balance would be re-working the modern unit upgrades slightly.

In particular:

• Anti-Cav. The biggest change I’d make is have Anti-Cav upgrade into Machine Guns rather than AT and Modern AT (perhaps renamed “National Guard” or “Militia”). When they do this, they’d lose both the +10 v Cav and the -10 v Melee, and instead would have bonus defence when fortified or something like that. Basically, Anti-Cav become a purely defensive unit from the Modern era onwards.
  • Query whether as “Machine Guns” AC would have a ranged attack or not – my preference is no ranged attack, and so continue as effectively a melee type unit (avoiding having to worry about whether Machine Guns are one or two tile range).
  • AC promotions should still work without the +10 v Cav / -10 v Melee, it’s just that the CS v Melee in the promotions would now actually make AC stronger v Melee units, which at that point in the game maybe works particularly given AC won’t have any further upgrades past Machine Guns.
  • On that, the change means that AC basically have a shelf-life, because they don’t have any further upgrades past Machine Guns. So, by the Modern Era, players really need to start looking towards having resources to enable them to build more punchy units. Alternatively, National Guard / Machine Guns etc. might get subsequent combat boosts through the Tech or Civics tree.
    
• Light Cavalry. My suggestion would be that LC still upgrade into Helicopters, but be a resource-less unit, fast moving, but somewhat weaker overall. By making AC purely defensive, that gives some room for LC to maybe play a different role at Helicopters, such as having perhaps a +CS v Tanks.

• Infantry and Tanks. I’d leave these basically as they are, including resource requirements, but re-work relative strengths, costs and maintenance costs. I’d also consider giving Tanks a +CS v Districts.

• Ranged. I’d have ranged instead upgrade to AT and Modern AT, given they’re not upgrading to Machine Guns anymore. There would be no change to how ranged work, they just take over AT and Modern AT graphically because AC take over Machine Guns. Ranged could have a bonus v LC and HC, but I don’t think that’s essential.

I think the main advantages of these changes are that:

• It gets rid of Machine Guns shooting two tiles, which just seems silly, because Ranged now upgrade into AT and Modern AT.
  
  
• AC should hopefully be easier to balance going forward, because they now have a different role to play.
  
  
• Melee, HC and AC hopefully have a bit more room mechanically to differentiate what they do.

Still, this is all maybe a bit more than you had in mind, so feel free to ignore. But personally, I do think the Modern Era units onwards need a bit of a re-jig before they can be properly balanced.

 

[Sostratus]

The modern era is fundamentally identical to any other era on the field. IE, having machine gun/modern AT/modern Armor at 80/85/90 is no different than if you had crossbow/pikemen/knights at 40/45/50.
Except airplanes exist.
My only concern atm is just making sure that the resourceless units aren’t too good. For example, Pikes at 45 and knights at 50. Does this make pikes too strong v crossbows? (I doubt it, they already counter knights decently!)
Can the Recon line be a viable unit if they have X/X-15, where X is the comparable ranged unit? (So extending how rangers work to skirms and spec ops.) That’s where things get dicey and have to be playtested.

Maybe I’ll have to consult Victoria on how naval units stack up, the trees are just so sparse at the moment. I have my eye on them because my “custom civ” project includes a naval UU.

But!
If I had free rein I would make quite dramatic changes, but people pay to play civ6, not my wacko ideal of civ6, so I am keeping it simple.
I’d much rather have Muskets & Pike/Shot go into riflemen (base unit of redcoats) which go into infantry etc. Longswords & trebuchets would also exist. There’s a few mods like steel & thunder to steal from.
Machine guns would get pulled back to modern era and then get a “Bazooka” upgrade a la civ5 (they’d use the modern AT model.)
The existing AT crew would become a support unit that you could attach to melee units to get your +10. Then I could actually make tanks awesome. Helicopters would be the late game, resource consuming, dedicated tank slayer unit. But the last two sets of units would be somewhat built around the idea that you’d use resourceless infantry/artillery/etc and then augment it with all the mechanized, modern armor, rocket artillery, etc that your resource stockpile could afford.
That’s not even touching how the unit class traits would get changed (things like light cab have permanent bonus vs ranges&siege) or policy cards (ranged & siege units would get their own card line.)

 

[Galvatron]

Second. IRL, Helicopters are pretty good against Tanks...

They're also even better against jets... at least in mid 20th century they were.

 

[acluewithout]

I don’t think Ranged v Pike v Knights is the same as Machine Guns v AT v Tanks.

What complicates unit balancing is that, in addition to power v cost and the whole r-s-p, you also have the question of what role or niche a unit plays or should play.

ie LC are a good unit all game, because their “niche” remains relevant - ie flanking and pillaging. Melee and Heavy Cav have a good niche early game - taking Cities and killing units - but get a little unstuck late game when taking Cities becomes more about Long Range Siege and Planes. AC are sort of always bad, because they are all about Defence, and aren’t particularly good at it from the start, but they get less relevant as the game goes on given all your cities get free walls and ranged attacks and what you really need to defend against are planes. Range are odd - they are really useful early game, but in Vanilla seemed to be designed to become irrelevant or purely defensive late game, but then FXS give machine guns two range so now they stay good but feel weird shooting over the top of other units with a hail of machine guns bullets.

I think good balance also needs to consider whether certain unit roles and or relationships should change.

A good example of that are recon units. These start the game really focused on exploration (indeed, even the scout xp card seems designed to help that). Mid game recon units become skirmisher units, helping support your main force (even if maybe light cav are better at that). At the end, recon become this odd black ops unit you can drop in to snipe support units - just the thing for knocking out AA before an air attack.

I really do like the idea of just rebalancing the power v cost, and I think that could do a lot of good. But I do think a problem is that late game units are a bit of a muddle, precisely because they try to keep various units in the same role as the early game. As I said, I think the game was designed to have ranged be phased out or become purely defensive, but instead machine guns have been buffed to be high tech archers. Late game you don’t have Rams or Towers, do Infantry and Tanks become functionally the same. Just buffing numbers won’t fix that, but I also get how unattractive more significant changes are (at least absent FXS making those changes).

Anyway. I’m perhaps not being very helpful. Let me try again...

One thing that might help with balancing some unit lines, in addition to power v cost and resources, might be slightly tweaking promotions and or tech tree placement. In particular, you might think about giving AC a promotion v ranged and or moving them to the Civics tree.

Another option might be to just make Ranged much, much weaker. Even much weaker, they’d still be good because you can attack without taking damage and shoot over the top of other units, but then they’d maybe not dominate AC and Siege so much.

Another-another option would be to give some units just a situational buff. eg if AC v Ranged is a problem, let AC have better defence in rough terrain.

I think another small balance tweak you could use is excluding certain units from the conscription type cards. If HC didn’t benefit from conscription, that would help “justify” being better than Melee (that could be a difference between Infantry and Tanks, for example).

How are you balancing Infantry and Tanks. I assume both keep the oil requirement? Are you just making Tanks more powerful and more expensive Infantry?

 

[Sostratus]

Another-another option would be to give some units just a situational buff. eg if AC v Ranged is a problem, let AC have better defence in rough terrain.

I think in order to truly balance the classes in the long term i need to tweak the modifiers that the unit classes themselves have. Mainly on things like attacking cities, bonuses vs other unit classes, etc.
Again, still looking for a good guide on how to make modifiers... there is one on the modhelp subforum but the links are out of date. Once I master that, then things are going to get super wild. The changes below I've already got running in game:

How are you balancing Infantry and Tanks. I assume both keep the oil requirement? Are you just making Tanks more powerful and more expensive Infantry?

So my first iteration is:
Melee/AC/LC: normal or X strength (being 25 in ancient+10 per era) except warriors still at 20 and spears are now 30 so they can survive in the classical.
Ranged: X-5,X-15 (the way they are now, MGs 80/70.) except Archers/slingers unchanged.
HC: X+5. This means chariots at 30.
Recon (concept) : X-5,X-20 (the way rangers are now, extended to skirmishers 40/25 and Specops 80/65. Scouts unchanged.) This is so they are usable in actual combat but and quite fragile to direct attacks. And -shocker- fully promoted guerilla Specops will function like navy seals/ elite infantry. But you'd never be able to throw fresh ones on the front line. Specops might need adjusting later, tricky unit.
I haven't changed any resources, except making Helos free of them. I may come back and add a material cost but not a fuel cost. I also haven't changed the cavalry unit or cuirs, because I'm not sure how the industrial era dynamics will play out just yet. Mainly I'm worried about making cuirs 70 (on trend for HC) because this is the only time in the game when HC doesn't have a contemporary Melee or AC unit to fight it. I might just make both these mounted guys 65.

Problems: barb camps are effectively tougher early game. Oligarchy is quite good since oligarchy pikes will be at 49. Oligarchy spears are competent units in classical but still get hacked apart by swords.
I mostly carried over UUs' str bonuses, except war carts are still 30. Most swords are now 35, legions are still 40. *Berserkers are now base 45, Samurai 50, Rough Rider replaces cuirs and uses 10 iron
Modern AT has 3 move right now, going to knock that down to 2 so mech inf have a role.
Basically now, melee/ac/lc are a RPS triangle with LC having the movement over melee. HC are elite units, my goal is to ensure they cost an appropriate amount. Costs are stage 2 though. If the combat strength and move lines up, then the rest should fall in line easily. That's why I'm really trying to get strength correct at the start.

 

[Laurana Kanan]

Again, still looking for a good guide on how to make modifiers... there is one on the modhelp subforum but the links are out of date. Once I master that, then things are going to get super wild.

LeeS' Modding Guide should have what you need. I think Lee uses xml instead of sql, but it will give you an idea of the structure.

 

[Sostratus]

LeeS' Modding Guide should have what you need. I think Lee uses xml instead of sql, but it will give you an idea of the structure.

I don't know how I missed this before. Holy cow this is an amazing resource. I aspire to be this helpful to so many people some day!