DESIGN: Unit Values

[Maquiladora]

First of all im not just spamming out "Design" threads just for the sake of it, i want to save some time when it comes to testing, so i can make changes to terrains, tile imps, buildings, wonder, units and whatever else, then test altogether.

So anyway, first of all i think 2 things need to be changed,

1) Faster Range/Flanker/Attack units need to be made weaker over their contemporary slower Defensive/Range units.

Example: 6 Knights 6 M. Archers, i can attack you pretty much anywhere and with relative force, so what if youve got 2 stacks of Pikeman and Catapults, theyre on the other side of your civ.

You may retake your cities, but what damage have i done, and i can move out of those cities and dance around your slow units, taking cities anywhere.

I dont think ive EVER built or seen any player better than me build a Catapult... ok maybe once or twice, this is not just due to the cost of Cats but theyre so slow. Unless youre fighting on entirely swamps or jungles (where Knights move 1 too) theres no point.

2) Flankers need their Ranged ability lowering alot, you know which ones im talking about, Cavalry and Tanks, they totally dominate the game.

Generally, units that cant defend fast and attack fast are useless, as the units currently stand, i mean so what if a Catapult can bombard, its 20 moves away from the action. Even if you do build up 4 stacks of Cannons Infantryman, they see you coming, even 5 turns gives them ample time to defend, waiting to ambush you with bombarding stacks.

Obviously fast units need to be weaker, perhaps even cost more to support. Id like to see slower, stronger units become the mainstay of attack and defence.

Anyway i had some other ideas but theyve gone now, hopefully they will return....

[MrBaggins]

Its a good idea to get ideas going on the basics now... we get a chance to reexamine everything, thoroughly.

Agreed on the catapults... I use them playing SP, merely because its nice to exploit the AI with.

If city defense is suitably beefed up, then bombard units... I.E. not flanking/fast... should be the counter to that.

Also, maybe the 1MP offensive/defensive units should have higher hitpoints than the fast/flanking units.

We need to look at the HP issue... so that the military standing setting (E.G. At War) isn't a futile setting too.

[Maquiladora]

If city defense is suitably beefed up, then bombard units... I.E. not flanking/fast... should be the counter to that.

By city defence do you mean City Walls? Because my point was that you cant be everywhere at once with Catapults/Pikemen, but you certainly can be with Knights/M.Archers.

Make Knights (more of) a luxury unit, i mean Horses and men in armour cant be mass produced like a single Pikeman can. Ideally, id like to see ONE Hoplite, behind City Walls, able to fend off 2 Knights........ Hoplites are usually standard garrison in every city by that stage, so cities with Walls should be realistically safe from a surprise attack of 2 Knights appearing from a Longship.

I agree that we need more varying HP's for units too, and we shouls scrap the armour rating altogether.

[Martin Gühmann]

I aggree for the flankers in my lasted unreleased of GoodMod I weaken the flankers.

-Martin

[Maquiladora]

What do you feel about removing the armour rating and only using varying hit points?

[Peter Triggs]

They didn't have the armour rating in CTP1 but put it in to CTP2 to keep spearmen from killing tanks. This is from the CTC Great Library. Most of it is from the manual but I think I dredged some of it up from somewhere else:

Attack: Represents the units's probability of a successful attack. The higher the attack rating the greater the chance that the unit will hit it's target.

Ranged: Represents the probability of a successful ranged attack.

Defense: Represents the unit's ability to avoid being hit. The higher the rating, the easier it is for the unit to avoid or deflect attacks.

Armor: Indicates the unit's ability to withstand a successful attack. The higher the rating, the less damage a unit takes when attacked.

Damage (Strength, or Firepower): Represents the amount of damage a unit inflicts with each successful attack.

Vision: The radius of the unit's circle of vision.

Movement: How many tiles the unit can move.

Max Hit Points: The health of a unit is represented by a coloured bar that appears over the flag next to the unit itself. Green indicates good health, yellow indicates some damage, and red indicates severe damage. Each time a unit is successfully attacked, its health is reduced accordingly and the colour and length of the health bar changes to reflect it. If the damage from an attack exceeds the unit's health, the unit dies.

[Maquiladora]

But 1 armour = 10 HP, so in effect all they did was increase the HP of Tanks to 30 HP (3 Armour) and Hoplites 10 HP (1 Armour).

I think i see your point for keeping Armour (if thats what your point was ) so that the green/yellow/red health bar remains constant on the scale of 1-10 (all units have 10HP in vanilla game) so it goes down in stages of 1/10th with all units.

My main point is that increments of 10, 20, 30 HP (1,2,3 etc armour) is too strong an effect..... you can solve this and balance units better by removing armour rating and use only HP for more precise armour, 7, 12, 23.

I dont know, maybe im an old civ in some ways, i miss proper hit points.

I also dug out the combat simulator i made with help from Locutus.

[kaan]

I would very much like to see the cruise missile changed, as it is now its very impotent and not worth spendig time on.

If it could be used as a special weapon that can target improvements or units or even pillage a road, anything that might be usefull.

Or maybe it just needs to be stronger and/or cheaper.

[Maquiladora]

*BUMP*

Guess we didnt get very far before...

Some time ago Locutus brought up an idea for changing the combat formula, i think its a really good idea, but i guess at this stage its a pretty big job, perhaps too big a job now we've come this far, so ill assume we wont be doing that for now, while we're discussing what units to use.

This time discussing particular units, instead of general changes. Heres a summary of the ground units:

warrior (att)
hoplite (def)
archer (ran)
mounted archer (ran)
samurai (att) special forces

knight (fla) special forces
pikemen (def)
catapult (ran)
infantryman (def)
cannon (ran)
cavalry (fla)

fascist (att) fascism only, special forces
machine gunner (att)
artillery (ran)
paratrooper (att) attack straight from air transport, special forces
tank (fla)
marine (att) attack straight from sea transport, special forces

mobile SAM (ran) active defence vs air

hover infantry (att)
fusion tank (fla)
war walker (ran)
leviathan (def) special forces

Some points:

* no flanking unit in ancient era. Elephant warrior, or make mounted archer flanker? The idea of such a mobile unit being used for ranged attack is a bit silly...
* no defensive unit in modern era. Machine gunner?

Current upgrade paths in updater2:

Warrior
Samurai
Fascist
Paratrooper
Leviathan

Hoplite> Pikemen> Infantrymen> Machine Gunner> Marine> Hover Infantry
Archer> Mounted Archer> Cavalry
Knight> Cavalry> Tank> Fusion Tank
Catapult> Cannon> Artillery> Mobile SAM> War Walker

Problems with this:

* Mixing Marines that can beach assault with the standard defensive units, i think it should be alone, used for surprise attack missions not defence.
* The Archer path is weird, id suggest keeping all the slower ranged units in the same upgrade path, and using mounted archers as a flanker or as a lone unit to go with knights.
* Mobile SAM, there should be one or two an army for active defence, but not upgrade the whole ranged units in your army to it, because they cant attack or bombard ground or sea.

Suggestion:

Fascist
Paratrooper
Marine
Mobile SAM
Leviathan

Warrior> Samurai
Hoplite> Pikemen> Infantrymen> Machine Gunner(def)> Hover Infantry
Archer> Catapult> Cannon> Artillery> War Walker
M. Archer(fla)> Knight> Cavalry> Tank> Fusion Tank

The lone units are kept seperate, to be built for special missions or government only, and the rest are IMO logical upgrades to each area. In other words, in most cases this is the way id build units to replace if i were doing it, i wouldnt replace a slow archer with a mounted archer in the same army for example, i would build a catapult.

This is all without introducing any new units or requirements for units. I dont know if we want to introduce some units like that using some of the new code though? Like Good requirements, or a unique unit for each city style?

[Tamerlin]

Here are the complete update paths that were decided for the Super Apolyton Pack along with the dead end units.

-----Update Paths-----


Hoplite>Pikemen>Infantryman>Machine Gunner>Marine>Hover Infantry

Knight>Cavalry>Tank>Fusion Tank

Fighter>Interceptor>Stealth Fighter

Bomber>Stealth Bomber

Archer>Mounted Archer>Cavalry

Diplomat>Empathic Diplomat

Fire Trireme>Ship of the Line>Ironclad>Battleship>Plasma Destroyer

Destroyer>Plasma Destroyer

Catapult>Cannon>Artillery>Mobile SAM>War Walker

Coracle>Longship>Carrack>Troop Ship

Submarine>Nuclear Submarine>Moray Striker

Priest>Televangelist

Spy>Cyber Ninja

Kraken>Dreadnaught






-----Dead End units-----


Abolitionist
Aircraft Carrier
Cargo Helicopter
Corporate Branch
Crawler
Cruise Missile
Eco Ranger
Eco Terrorist
Fascist
Infector
Lawyer
Leviathan
Nuke
Paratrooper
PT Boat
Samurai
Scout Sub
Sea Engineer
Settler
Slaver
Space Plane
Spy Plane
Urban Planner
Warrior

I agree with you Maq, there is a choice to make about the Archers, either Mounted Archers, either Catapults.

As far as I am concerned, upgrading Warriors to Samourai/Swordsman is rather a fair option. But IMO, the Samourai/Swordsman could be upgraded to Infantrymen. Whatever the choice, I have no problem with Warrior upgrading to Samourai/Swordsman which then stays a dead end unit.

About Archers and Catapults, I agree once again, I have asked myself the question several times before, do they have to upgrade to Mounted Archers, or do they have to upgrade to Catapults. I would reply that the Archers were effectively used the way Catapults were used (though their range was limited and they were thus used differently on the battleground), but I could also reply that Archers did not disappear before Gunpowder and the birth of infantryman. Cannons and Archers were both used during the Renaissance.

As far as I am concerned I would only upgrade Archers when Cannon is available and would left Catapults with Archers on the battlefield.

Archers>Cannon>etc.
Catapults>Cannon>etc.

About MobileSAM, I would left this unit in the Upgrade path along with Artillery and so on because weapons are becoming more and more sophisticated and can do many things that the generation before could not do. Because when we are approaching the end of the game, we have a lot of units and much more interesting things to do than producing and discarding units, in order to replace them. The Updater2 reduces "book keeping" a lot and this is a good idea. I think the same about Marines and Hover Infantry. Hover Infantry is a multipurpose unit that was designed to play both the role of traditional infantry and the role of Assault units like Marines.

IMO we have to think the other way around, or at the very least to think a bit differently. We, as CtP2 players, what are the units we are using to replace which units when we are playing? IMO we have to think about this, a game is supposed to be fun and from my long experience of paper role playing games, paper board games and wargames, I have learnt that rules and simulation constraints must be thrown out through the window when they come across fun and pleasure. Isn't it why we are playing after all?

My point is that the highest possible number of units should be allowed to upgrade because discarding older units and replacing them manually is becoming more and more of a burden as you are progressing in the game.

If you are not allowing Marines to upgrade, I don't think I will ever produce and thus use Marines as they won't be replaced by Hover Infantry later. The same way you are not currently using Catapults...

[Ekmek]

THe few units I added to the AE mod stuff was IIRC: Legion, elephant Warrior, swordsman (splitting from Samurai) and Guerrilla.

The legion and Samurai were culture only units to replace the swordsman (though samurai should be a Japanese knight replacement)

The guerrilla was an attempt to get the partisan effect going. I have to see where I was in that code.

The elephant warrior was to add a resource unit needing the elephant good. I believe I added a horse good as well and used that for mounted units.

These were just flavor touches and of course open to debate.

Other tweaks I think I cut back the Knight movement its what 3 or 4 versus 1 for infantry pretty huge. THat was one thing I liked about civ3 no real over power units and you didn't really break the '3 move' barrier until you got mechanized.

Sea wise I think adding the extra spot on the catamaran and have 3 moves made early sea travel worth while. Without it a mounted unit moves farther than a boat and unless I had some strange desire to go to another continent and get beaten I mainly spent the early ages consolidating my continent. But with the improved catamaran you could atleast move for recon and maybe drop a small harrassment force to get some good huts or pick off some settlers.

[Maquiladora]

Well i removed those units you added from the list so we could decide from a "clean slate" as it were. Try and fix everything we perceive as wrong or unbalanced, by changing as little as possible.

I agree movement in general is too high on many units compared to units of the same age. The problem with high movement is, it doesnt matter how weak the fast unit is, if it can move so much faster it can do a lot of damage (pillage or attack empty cities) to an AI which is using ANY slower units at all. Tanks (6 moves) moving around Machine Gunners (2 moves) is one example, not to mention Tanks are so much more powerful, or Knights dancing around Pikemen, Pikemen may have bonus vs mounted but youll never catch a Knight to see it.

Ive suggested before making standard changes based on movement type, foot 1, horse 2, wheel 3, hover 4. If the difference were Knight 2 move and Pikemen 1, or M. Gunner 1, Tanks 3, it would make things much more interesting.

Theres also the issue of it being too easy to attack already, the high movement just makes it easier for the attacker, because all the good defensive units (Pikemen+Catapult, Infantrymen+Cannon) are all too slow compared to Knights or Cavalry, so the situation breaks down to fast units being the best units for everything, even for defence, because those units are too fast compared to defensive ones, you can only defend adequately all your cities with the same fast units, and because you can attack a city from outside a civs borders in one turn, it gives them no time to respond.

The case of the Coracle movement is different because its just a transport. I think the distance it travels (2 moves) on any map is probably far enough, the real problem is the cargo size. It should probably be 2 units, since 1 makes it way too expensive/time consuming to move and transport a full army all in the timeframe of the ancient era. 6 Coracles for moving a full army is still a big task but its more realistic and achieveable.

[Ekmek]

I agree to those. though I think 3 on coracle movement to make travel a little attractive. but not a deal breaker Other than that i agreewith the other mvmt stuff.

i think we should add some of the range bombard to cannons and stuff that would increase their value. this would let them atleast put a hurt on a fast attacking unit before they get hit.

[Maquiladora]

The only reason i would leave Coracle movement the same is because Longship has 3, so maybe we'd have to increase the rest then. Im also thinking about the chance of lost at sea thing, i guess its working now? We could use that on Coracles too if it isnt already.

Maybe we should wait for at least Tamerlins response before we go ahead with anything though.

[Ekmek]

yeah its easier to follow the "Tamerlin Rule" when we know what Tamerlin is thinking


I know the lost at sea thing was working during my previous builds. I havent tried the new playtest but I assume its still working (I added a slic message as well)