Would nerfing ranged help the 1UPT AI?

[Stringer1313]

Would nerfing ranged help the 1 UPT AI? It seems like most of the problems stem from players being able to exploit ranged units to defend their territories against AI invasions.

You could nerf the combat power of ranged units, maybe even reduce the range to 1, and/or allow ranged units to whittle units' strength down to 50% or 75%, after which ranged attacks are ineffective. So that ranged units are really more like support units that soften rather than eliminate. Just a thought.

 

[Onii-chan]

Somewhat but even without that a human player will still be at a huge advantage. I'd say nerfing ranged units would probably have had a bigger impact in Civ V; in Civ VI you can roll over the AI with nothing but cavalry if you want. Ultimately it's the AI that's the problem, not the combat system

 

[CoolLizy]

No, it would only make ranged units less useful for the player. Right now the AI isn't even attacking properly with its melee units. It seems to prioritize movement above attack, making it easy to pick off what should be overwhelming invasions.

 

[rezaf]

They just need to be a tad more suicid ... err ... I mean aggressive. If there was only one AI objective governing combat AI, namely "CHAAAAAAAARGE!!!!!!", it'd go a great length. In fact, in many situations, it'd probably make it quite deadly.
On higher difficulties, such zerg rushes could actually wear players down.
And what good does pretending to be clever do the AI anyway? It's stupid beyond measure. Firaxis are unable to fix this. So they should just embrace this.

 

[tomekum]

Would nerfing ranged help the 1 UPT AI? It seems like most of the problems stem from players being able to exploit ranged units to defend their territories against AI invasions.

You could nerf the combat power of ranged units, maybe even reduce the range to 1, and/or allow ranged units to whittle units' strength down to 50% or 75%, after which ranged attacks are ineffective. So that ranged units are really more like support units that soften rather than eliminate. Just a thought.

Would nerfing ranged help the 1 UPT AI? It seems like most of the problems stem from players being able to exploit ranged units to defend their territories against AI invasions.

You could nerf the combat power of ranged units, maybe even reduce the range to 1, and/or allow ranged units to whittle units' strength down to 50% or 75%, after which ranged attacks are ineffective. So that ranged units are really more like support units that soften rather than eliminate. Just a thought.

I agree. The ranged conbat is too P since civ 5 introduced it. I think it should be nerfed and at the same time the attacked unit should be able to counrterattack. Its unrealistic that archer units could attack melee without taking any damage. In reallife battles wre fought between armies consisted of many unit types and the archers were also taking damage.

 

[Onii-chan]

I agree. The ranged conbat is too P since civ 5 introduced it. I think it should be nerfed and at the same time the attacked unit should be able to counrterattack. Its unrealistic that archer units could attack melee without taking any damage. In reallife battles wre fought between armies consisted of many unit types and the archers were also taking damage.

..and in Civ if you have multiple types of units working together in your army, you can target the enemy's ranged units with your own ranged units. How is it unrealistic that an archer doesn't take any damage by shooting at a melee unit? That logic would only work if every unit in Civ consisted of several smaller squadron of unit types. But since that's clearly not their design choice (and let's be honest here, that design would be terrible gameplay-wise), it makes perfect sense the way it is. If I shoot an arrow into the air, I'm not suddenly going to break my leg for it out of nowhere

 

[tomekum]

..and in Civ if you have multiple types of units working together in your army, you can target the enemy's ranged units with your own ranged units. How is it unrealistic that an archer doesn't take any damage by shooting at a melee unit? That logic would only work if every unit in Civ consisted of several smaller squadron of unit types. But since that's clearly not their design choice (and let's be honest here, that design would be terrible gameplay-wise), it makes perfect sense the way it is. If I shoot an arrow into the air, I'm not suddenly going to break my leg for it out of nowhere

It's unrealistic in that sense that ranged units right now are claimed to be around 100 km from the targeted unit. So its invulnerable from any counterattack. In real battles they were attacked by the melee units as they were part of the whole army. I think that the current model is too easy to exploit by player, so he can attack any unit without taking risk of counterattack. In previous civs, even in Civ 4, you could be defeated in any attack, even if you had 95% chances of winning. That made the wars more intersting and not deterministic as it's been since civ 5. Right now wars are pretty boring in my opinion. Every unit is like an RPG hero, gaining XP and in most cases invincible. That's really poor mechanic.

 

[UWHabs]

Well, civ is also unrealistic in that most maps, Paris would be the only city that fits in France, etc...

Reducing range to 1 might help, but it might make it even worse for the AI. Some things that might help:
-nerf range, maybe by capping damage, or if not, something like reducing the damage they inflict based on how much health the enemy has. So essentially an archer attacking a full strength warrior might deal 20 damage, but attacking a warrior at 50% health would only deal 10 damage. That way ranged units could still kill, but would be much less effective. You basically use them to soften up units, and then need cavalry or melee to finish them off.
-siege units should be support units that can attack. I mean, if we have battering rams as support, how is a catapult all that much different? That would help crowding, and might have a larger effect to help the AI, since they wouldn't have to worry about blocking their catapults as much. Later siege units could also have a secondary function of providing a sort of "first strike" defense against attacks as well as their primary purpose of city attack, as it should be harder to attack a musketman+bombard as it would be to attack just a musketman

Barring turning all ranged units to support units, or relaxing the 1upt to instead have both melee and ranged able to move onto the same tile, the above might give enough to reduce the strength of ranged units. But yeah, the fact that they can basically go through an entire war potentially without taking any damage makes ranged units too powerful right now.

 

[CoolLizy]

In reallife battles wre fought between armies consisted of many unit types and the archers were also taking damage.

In real life, giant men did not idle around, politely waiting for another player to take their turn.

 

[Cymsdale]

The AI would be better if it was far less cowardly. It's not like the player needs to use some elite cheese tactics to overcome them now, if you just hulk-smash you'll end up doing far better than them.

 

[tomekum]

In real life, giant men did not idle around, politely waiting for another player to take their turn.

I know that civ is not meant to be realistic and that's why I am suggesting the solution to make the ranged units less powerful as they are right now.

BTW you are right, since Civ 5 the game is more of a board game than a simulation of civilization as it were in Civ 4 for example. Especially with Revolutions mod the world seemed more alive. The wars and battles were less predictable. Right now you could just steamroll the AI with almost any army of ranged units. You could determine the outcome of battle before it even starts. There is no thrill to it. Just bland and simple board game with stupid AI.

 

[Onii-chan]

It's unrealistic in that sense that ranged units right now are claimed to be around 100 km from the targeted unit. So its invulnerable from any counterattack. In real battles they were attacked by the melee units as they were part of the whole army. I think that the current model is too easy to exploit by player, so he can attack any unit without taking risk of counterattack. In previous civs, even in Civ 4, you could be defeated in any attack, even if you had 95% chances of winning. That made the wars more intersting and not deterministic as it's been since civ 5. Right now wars are pretty boring in my opinion. Every unit is like an RPG hero, gaining XP and in most cases invincible. That's really poor mechanic.

Bringing realism into the picture doesn't really solve anything. If you want to go down that track, there are countless things you could complain about. Like how an ancient era archer has twice the range of an atomic era machine gun. In the same way, units on the map are always going to be completely off-scale from any realistic point of view and looking at them as such is thus quite meaningless

Regarding the win/loss thingy, you have to remember that every unit represents a whole bunch of soldiers. Being able to lose everything against all odds is a bit far-fetched then. A lone individual could fall unexpectedly to a stray arrow, but it'd be kind of hard to kill an entire army of far superior strength with nothing but "luck". Though I guess that's also to some extent bringing realism into the picture so I guess you could bring it back just for the hell of it if you think it'd be better. Could be fun to try just once with a mod at least

 

[Nigel_Tufnel2]

In Acken's Mod for Civ 5, part of what made the AI so much tougher was the nerf to Range. Consider in 6 how a Warrior will really hurt a Slinger (but only damage an Archer maybe 30%), that's somewhat how a Civ 5 Warrior would hurt a Civ 5 Archer...

https://forums.civfanatics.com/thre...-for-singleplayer-and-ai-improvements.550671/

 

[Victoria]

I imagine they nerfed the movement to help the AI. If you nerf the shooting as well it will start being like checkers.

 

[isau]

The AIs problem is partly a design issue with combat itself. It's the fact that a unit parked without moving gets an advantage and actually heals HP back. So a lot of times defeating the AI involves just standing in place.

I think a unit that takes damage during a turn should not also heal that turn. Even if they didn't "move" they still fought a battle that turn. That would fix a lot of things. However, it would also be a nerf to melee units which are already not that great, so they probably need a combat bonus relative to Ranged for it to work.

As for making the AI fight more sensibly, I think they basically need to drop the attempts to make it clever and go bare bones:
- AI should try to keep an Archer of some kind in every city center and encampment
- If city is near coast, AI should try to keep a ranged ship of some kind nearby

For assaulting cities:
- AI should grow increasingly relentless as city HP drops, and nearly undeterrable if a city goes below 25% health or so
- AI should mark certain enemy units as worthy of death and focus fire them

 

[orasis]

The player character should never have to change it's game-play to help the AI.

 

[KrikkitTwo]

I imagine they nerfed the movement to help the AI. If you nerf the shooting as well it will start being like checkers.

That's ridiculous.
Ranged units are OP in general in 1UPT (they need to either be ~5 range and def str weaker...or 10-15 def str weaker)

The human > AI 1UPT advantage is because the AI can't move its units well
1-ranged units are More op because of this (since the AI has to move to attack)
2-by making movement More complicated, they hurt the AI.

 

[Victoria]

That's ridiculous.

The ranged units are OP because they do a lot more damage than in reality archers did.
The AI has issues due to movement as you said. With Civ VI they nerfed movement so you cannot move as far therefore making the AI supposedly easier to handle it.

If you moved archers to 1 you may as well move horses to 1 as well. Then we will be at checkers.

one is a bit miffed at being called ridiculous for my views. I was saying do not nerf their range, not their power.

 

[REDfeller]

How about a finite number of arrows (or attacks) before resupply (have to return unit to a friendly city for more arrows).

I agree, if archers are caught by melee or cav
they should be one shotted.

 

[Cymsdale]

I don't like the idea of nerfing ranged into oblivion. They really should be powerful against slow moving melee units, but perhaps be much less powerful against cities. If unit types are going to have roles, they should do their roles well and be much less useful when you are using them incorrectly. It seems that cavalry (both light and heavy, but especially light) should be a hard counter to ranged units.