Woodsman VS Guerrilla

[[to_xp]Gekko]

I think a while ago I read a post saying that the guerrilla promotion was supposed to be equals to the woodsman promotion ( i.e. benefit both defense AND attack on hills) , but that was impossible right now due to civ4 shortcomings basically. is that gonna be implemented in 0.34? right now I think woodsman is much more worthwhile to get than guerrilla, unless you're talking about specific situations, which doesn't sound fair imho.

maybe while guerrilla is still not working as intended, something should be changed slightly to make these 2 promotions on par with each other? I think the options are basically 1) to have woodsman effect only defense, NOT attack or 2) raise the bonus for defending hills for guerrilla. I guess I prefer option 2) .

completely unrelated: there are some mods out there for BTS that make it so that the commerce sliders ( i.e. gold, science culture ) can get raised/lowered by 5% instead of 10%, so that you can control them more accurately. I think that would be kinda nice to have in FFH as well, although not vital. oh, and is Civ4lerts gonna be in 0.34? it makes the life of a civ player that much easier

 

[Vehem]

In terms of the promotions themselves, they're not too badly balanced.

Woodsman I +30% attack and defense
Woodsman II +30% attack and defense, double move.

Guerrilla I +40% defense.
Guerrilla II +60% defense, double move.

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Basically means that taking both Guerrilla promotions grants a massive bonus to defense, whilst both Woodsman promotions grants a more moderate bonus to both attack and defense.

The only stumbling block here is that Guerrilla II and Woodsman II are both available only with religion specific techs - Way of the Forests and Arete, which is thematically appropriate.

Might not hurt to make both Guerrilla I and II +50% defense, though Guerrilla promoted archers are already *very* useful in hill cities, even without the FF tweaks.

 

[hbar]

I think thematically it fits; a forest can be a liability on defense if your attacker can move silently and quickly. Hills, however, are almost always a defensive boon. As with most things in warfare, it comes down to visibility.

I doubt its possible, but I'd like to see promotions that affect your odds based on where you're attacking from. So guerrilla would give a bonus if you attack from hills to plains/grassland. Druids would have a bonus attacking from mountains, bears from dens, etc.

 

[Blackmantle]

The fine but important point which does indeed balance it out abit is which units can actually promote to Woodsman 2 as opposed to Geruillia 2. Makeing Geruillia 2 quite more interesting at times actually. Unlike Woodsman 1 + Geruillia 1. (Even though im finding Runes the far less interesting pick than Fol for many games because of the civs i like / play more often. But then again overall i still use both rather seldom. )

If one whould want to take it further in getting them more equal, a possibility whould be to give more Units acess to Woodsman 2 and in addition add a +15% or +20% for each level of Geruillia (15% seems like enough i reckon but i might be off.).
But all in all both promotions have their solid uses and i at least use both Woodsman 1 and Geruillia 1 in non-reload high-difficulty games way more often than say, Drill (which i do use regularly for mounted units) or the remaining Slayer-promotions (which i virtually never pick if i don't get them for free).
So ill keep that a modmod-suggestion to those who miss a balance.
Unlike in CiV-4 effects and terraforming options in FFH2 are much different.

As is, honestly its sort of balanced. But it caters to different units / circumstances / strategies.
Geruilia is good for City- and Chokepoint defenders or to just let your units more or less reliably survive against flat out stronger ones if you can chose the Terrain. Woodsman 1+!2 is mostly for offensive recon-units roaming the countriside. (Further augumented by animals playing a role there often and they don't get a terrain bonus usually. And by the fact that Recon are the strongest Units in the field usually by pure power. Especially if the Religion or Civ is focused on it.)

Also remember that spreading Forests is far easier than spreading mountains (which only works for dwarves if im not mistaken which start with double-move on mountains anyways.) further cementing the difference.
(Getting a forest in a city is very! hard. Founding a City on a hill on the other hand is easy and might be very rewarding. I find myself doing it increasingly often lately. Also movement bonus in said terrain is more interesting for defensive units in my book for allowing a fast escape if things really run bad. So the leaning of the promotions makes quite sense, sorts of.)

Honestly im finding it ok as is, due to the way FFH 2 is designed.


Oh and Geruillia 2-archers (which are possible if im not mistaken) make for killer City + Terrain defenders much more versatile than just your usual Garrison 3 Troops (for one Promotion less) as quite more players might find out due to marnoks lairs implementation to main FFH2 in 0.34. That might up Runes religions attractiveness in its own right and all by itself. We will see soon.

 

[Zechnophobe]

The real meat of the situation is that If you have Woodsman 2, you are often attacking onto Ancient Forests, which have a greater defense boost than normal forests, which somewhat cancels out the effect.

Whereas Guerrilla is only on hills, which don't spread themselves.

That said, I rarely pick up the RoK religion, so I have a strong bias towards Woodsman.

 

[MagisterCultuum]

I tend to think that the Dwarven racial promotion needs improving, as Elven provides attack/defense boni in forests but Dwarven only helps with movement. Elven and woodsmen stack better than dwarven and woodsman do.

I also think it might be better to allow woodsman/guerrilla II with only the religion founding tech, and to add in BtS's Woodsman/Guerrilla III promotions as religion specific ones.

 

[Fafnir13]

That's an interesting idea. Would be fun to be able to get some extra movement buffs without having to dedicate your religion one way or another.

 

[Zechnophobe]

I tend to think that the Dwarven racial promotion needs improving, as Elven provides attack/defense boni in forests but Dwarven only helps with movement. Elven and woodsmen stack better than dwarven and woodsman do.

Macro wise, I don't agree. The two promotions need not have the same strength, given the other differences between the civs. As it is, the Elves are one of the strongest factions, macroscopically, so if anything they need toning down.

If you want to make better racial bonus', how about one for the Humans, they don't get anything at all! .

 

[onedreamer]

I think a while ago I read a post saying that the guerrilla promotion was supposed to be equals to the woodsman promotion ( i.e. benefit both defense AND attack on hills) , but that was impossible right now due to civ4 shortcomings basically.

If there was a shortcoming, it was when FFH2 was on Vanilla. BtS already has Guerrilla 3 as a promotion that grants a bonus attacking a target on a hill.

 

[onedreamer]

If you want to make better racial bonus', how about one for the Humans, they don't get anything at all! .

they used to get a sort of a bonus once: there were vs Race promotions for all races except humans. Now that these are gone, the "human bonus" is also gone.