AU mod: Amphibious Units

[alexman]

The problem:

As mentioned in the Naval Bombardment thread, the C3C AI prefers to bombard cities instead of resources, even when it doesn’t follow up with ground or amphibious attacks. The units bombarded by the AI heal in the next turn, often resulting in no damage suffered by the bombarded civilization. On the other hand, if you leave your cities undefended, the AI will not bombard them, which encourages the counter-intuitive strategy of leaving coastal cities undefended until Marines (or Berserks) are available. The AI, of course, does not follow this strategy.

Possible Solution:

Add the Amphibious ability to Musketmen, Musketeers, Riflemen, and Infantry. Add the AI offense flag to Musketmen and Musketeers. Even units with a low attack are enough to discourage players from leaving cities undefended or lightly defended. Remember, units have their attack factor doubled in amphibious assaults.

The benefits of this solution are numerous:

• Players get another option for invading, which encourages combined arms. Naval Power in the Middle and early Industrial Ages becomes more important.
• The AI doesn’t waste resources by needlessly bombarding cities.
• Coastal Fortresses become more useful, as players now have a reason to protect their units in cities from naval bombardment.
• Unlike the human player, the AI always defends its coastal cities, so it would not have to divert resources to deal with the new amphibious threat.
• One-tile islands are no longer invulnerable until Marines.

On the downside, this is quite a big change for the AU mod, and should be made only if the enhanced element of strategy and better AI performance are worth it. I think it’s worth it. What do you think?

[Kuciwalker]

I'd rather Longbowmen (and maybe Archers) get this, seeing as the amphibious Berzerk replaces them.

Btw, don't Infantry have the same attack as Marines? Giving them amphib could make Marines worthless (as Marines also cost more).

EDIT: n/m about the infantry

[alexman]

Longbowmen would attack with an Amphibious strength of 8. No other unit is that strong in the Middle Ages, so that would encourage strange tactics from having better odds of taking a city with an ampibious assault than with a ground attack. On the other hand, Musketmen would attack with an amphibious attack of 4.

Infantry has an attack factor of 6 (8 in the AU mod). Marines have an attack factor of 12.

[pauli]

while i wouldn't want realism to outweigh gameplay concerns, i'm rather dubious about musketmen splashing about at low tide.

why would longbowmen and musketmen have doubled attack values from the sea?

i't tend to give the ability to warriors, swordsmen, and med inf, rather than muskets.

[Tall Stranger]

I hate to be negative, but I can't say I'm real excited by this idea. Couple of reasons:

1. In general, anything which increases attack options within the game will, almost certainly, strengthen the player rather than the AI.

2. The AI is terrible at using transports, etc. for conventional warfare. How many times have you seen two galleons show up and drop off a total of 3 units? Happens to me all the time. Even in C3C (in which I think the AI is better at stacking units), I'd be quite surprised if makes full use of the capability this change would provide it.

3. I don't know about everyone else, but I always keep a couple of decent units to safeguard key rear-area cities. (several Horsies/ Knights, some defensive units), just in case the AI decides to land a couple units next to my cities. Since the AI is terrible about masking where it's heading, it would be a trivial process to move a bunch of units around, causing the AI to change its "target city" constantly. Net result: AI builds a bunch of units that never factor into the battle.

4. Making amphib assault more common cheapens it and makes cool units like Berzerks, well, less cool. (OK, not a great reason! )

You're right, as it is now, naval bombardment is useless for the AI. But to address the problem, I would much rather see naval bombardment changed back, so that an AI could inflict economic damage by bombarding. In my view, your "cure" for this problem is worse than the "disease."

[Kuciwalker]

Originally posted by alexman
Longbowmen would attack with an Amphibious strength of 8. No other unit is that strong in the Middle Ages, so that would encourage strange tactics from having better odds of taking a city with an ampibious assault than with a ground attack. On the other hand, Musketmen would attack with an amphibious attack of 4.

Infantry has an attack factor of 6 (8 in the AU mod). Marines have an attack factor of 12.

Huh? Is attack strength doubled for amphibious attacks?

[lockstep]

Originally posted by alexman
Longbowmen would attack with an Amphibious strength of 8.

You're sure about that one? This would mean that Berzerks attack with an amphibious strength of 12 at the moment!

[Kuciwalker]

Theseus would like that

[ZargonX]

I was under the impression that amphib. attack simply eliminated all [i]defensive[/b] bonuses. Do I need to stand corrected?

[alexman]

Originally posted by lockstep

You're sure about that one? This would mean that Berzerks attack with an amphibious strength of 12 at the moment!

Sorry, it was among the changes that were mentioned before C3C was released, so I assumed it was true.

However, I just tested it and it's not true after all. So forget giving Musketmen an offensive ability! Next idea!

[alexman]

OK, the amphibious bonus is actually 25% (confirmed by Firaxis).

I'm starting to like the idea of giving the amphibious ability to archer-type units. Archers and Longbowmen won't become obsolete with Iron.

Originally posted by Tall Stranger
1. In general, anything which increases attack options within the game will, almost certainly, strengthen the player rather than the AI.

In principle, I agree. However, this is a special case that helps the AI. As I mentioned above, the AI defends its coastal cities anyway. Humans usually defend several coastal cities at once by keeping a mobile force ready to attack after a landing has happened. With early amphibious units, the human has to spend more resources on defense, but the AI doesn't. Also, the idea is not to make amphibious landings a prefered option of attack, but to use the threat of an invasion against empty cities as an incentive to make the human defend his cities. This is why I proposed to give the amphibious ability to units with low attack value.

2. The AI is terrible at using transports, etc. for conventional warfare.

Again, just the threat of an amphibious invasion from the AI will serve its purpose to strengthen the AI and to force a more balanced coastal defense from the human. The AI won't carry out a full blown invasion; it never does. It will be more like a raid, and I'm sure the AI will be very happy to raize one of your coastal cities.

3. I don't know about everyone else, but I always keep a couple of decent units to safeguard key rear-area cities. (several Horsies/ Knights, some defensive units), just in case the AI decides to land a couple units next to my cities.

Your defense will still have to change to prevent the AI from landing inside your cities though, won't it?

Since the AI is terrible about masking where it's heading, it would be a trivial process to move a bunch of units around, causing the AI to change its "target city" constantly. Net result: AI builds a bunch of units that never factor into the battle.

This happens anyway. The AI builds some units and sends them off on transports. I don't imagine the AI will build any more if the units have the amphibious capability. The difference is that amphibious units can catch the human off-guard much more easily, as it can attack the city one turn sooner.

[vulture]

Would it not make more sense to give amphibious attack to defensive units only, if anything. That way, it's not really an amphibious attack, since 1 attack (spearmen, pikes) or 2 (muskets, musketeers) aren't going to hurt anything of their era (except by taking much heavier casualties than what they are attacking), but will be able to walk in off the boat and take control of an undefended town.

Archers or longbows would be a bad idea for this IMHO - they are already reasonable attackers, and would be even better as amphibious units - it would make amphibious assaults for the humans viable throught the ancient and medieval eras, and wouldn't be well used by the AI. Adding it to defensive units woulnd't be used by the AI much either - but would enable the AI to walk in to undefended towns, which seems to be the point.

Two problems with this:

One, the defensive units are flagged as - er - defensive, so even with amphibious ability, the AI isn't going to put them in a boat and sail off to do some raiding. We'd have to find a way to encourage the AI to build some offensive spears and pikes, which can be done with the 'offense' flag in the editor, but might hurt the AI more than it helps by encouraging it to build offensive spearmen rather than horsemen, archers or swordsmen. Has anyone tested the effects of this?

Two, human players could possibly still parley some kind of value out of this in the middle ages. The lack of an ancient bombard ship means that the ancient era isn't too heavily damaged - you'd need quite a few ships and quite a lot of spearmen to take down a town defended by 2 spears and an archer (which is what you'd probably be facing by the time you could assemble an invasion force). But particularly in the world of MP, these kinds of extreme tactics can be done. What remains to be seen is whether it would be viable, or whether investing all those shields in a pile of swordsmen (with much better survivability) would be a much superior route (in which case game-play isn't much altered aside from the need to defend coastal towns for humans). Once frigates appear in the middle ages (okay, late middle ages), amassing enough of them to redline all defenders (particularly with the stock bombard rules in conquests, damaging units first with no coastal fortress) is not too hard, and gives your naval musket attack force pretty good survival chances. Consider, veteran musket (4 hp, 2.5 naval attack) vs veteran musket (1 hp, 8 defense more or less), attacker wins 66.3% of the time. Versus a redlined riflemen (12 defense, for illustrative purposes) it is still a 53.1% chance in favour of the attacker. A good stack of frigates plus a galleon of muskets could probably deal with a city defended by muskets or rifles with surprising ease. The human player who was prepared to commit to a lot of ships would have a good window of opportunity from magnetism through to infantry.

[Tall Stranger]

Originally posted by alexman
In principle, I agree. However, this is a special case that helps the AI. As I mentioned above, the AI defends its coastal cities anyway. Humans usually defend several coastal cities at once by keeping a mobile force ready to attack after a landing has happened. With early amphibious units, the human has to spend more resources on defense, but the AI doesn't.

It better, because the human is going to use this to an absurd advantage. I would seriously consider, in my war planning, building 4-5 galleys, loading them up with a couple of spears and the rest archers, float them 3 spaces from their capital or large coastal city and launch an amphib attack on the first turn of the war. Combine that with a conventional land invasion, and the AI is toast.

Also, consider how much easier it will be to raid a more civ not on your continent. I would have little hesitation about declaring on a distant, rising power. Position some boats off their shore, declare, raze 2-3 cities, and sue for peace. Not only will you likely get something for it, but you can utterly trash their economy. Basically, any civ will have the ability to do what, right now, only Berzerks can. Not nearly as well as Berzerks, but still lethal in the hands of a human.

Also, the idea is not to make amphibious landings a prefered option of attack, but to use the threat of an invasion against empty cities as an incentive to make the human defend his cities. This is why I proposed to give the amphibious ability to units with low attack value.

But it WILL be the preferred option of attack. As you've pointed out, you get a 25% attack bonus. BUT you also get a movement of at least 3 through enemy territory. Why bother attack via land with single move units? I'd just bounce from coastal city to coastal city.

Your defense will still have to change to prevent the AI from landing inside your cities though, won't it?

Only slightly. I'd reduce the number of mobile units in the rear, slightly increase the number of defenders, and position some of the defenders in such a way that, once I figure out which city the AI is headed for, I can rapidly reinforce it. Slight increase in my costs, a little more work for me, but well worth the increased attack options I have.

If I thought the AI was even marginally capable of an effective amphib assault (i.e. if it built a bunch of galleys, filled them with archers and hit me), I'd fully support this. But, as we all know, the AI is too predictable in how it acts to make its amphib assault a meaningful threat.

[Arrian]

I wish there was a way of giving ALL units the amphibious ability, but having all but the special amphib troops (Berserks, Marines) suffer a huge penalty when attacking amphibiously. That would allow any unit to grab an undefended town, but taking a defended town would be extremely bloodly w/o real amphib units.

The lack of an ancient bombard ship means that the ancient era isn't too heavily damaged

There is the Dromon.

-Arrian

[alexman]

Originally posted by Tall Stranger

I would seriously consider, in my war planning, building 4-5 galleys, loading them up with a couple of spears and the rest archers, float them 3 spaces from their capital or large coastal city and launch an amphib attack on the first turn of the war. Combine that with a conventional land invasion, and the AI is toast.

And how is this different than what you can do now? Just load Swordsmen and Spears and attack the turn after you land. The losses from attacking with low-attack amphibious units will likely be offset by the losses from the AI attack after you land.

Why bother attack via land with single move units?

Because the idea is to give the amphibious property to units with a relatively low attack strength.

[vulture]

Originally posted by Arrian
I wish there was a way of giving ALL units the amphibious ability, but having all but the special amphib troops (Berserks, Marines) suffer a huge penalty when attacking amphibiously. That would allow any unit to grab an undefended town, but taking a defended town would be extremely bloodly w/o real amphib units.

It would also allow the capturing of workers and catapults by any seaborne troops as well, which isn't necessarily a bad thing

There is the Dromon.

There goes my lack of Conquests experience again. Got the game finally - just waiting to finish of my current PtW conquest-fest before starting with the new stuff. I don't imagine the Dromon would be a huge problem: due to the lack of ancient era naval warfare in a big way, how useful really is it in practice? Or is it intended to be one of those mediocre UUs that make up for a good set of civ traits? FX: wanders off to do some quick researcj. Byzantines: seafaring, scientific. A reasonable, but not brilliant pairing. Does that mean the dromon could do with the boost of enabling the Byzantines to have effective ancient era amphibious attacks? Or would that make them overpowered?

[ducki]

Your defense will still have to change to prevent the AI from landing inside your cities though, won't it?

This really depends on how many coastal cities you typically have AS WELL AS the ratio of your rear-guard to cities. I could easily switch from have a single stack of 4 knights centered on my 3-4 "important" coastal cities to having a stack of 2-3 knights (still centered) and one knight in each of those 3-4 cities and be able to shift defenses in whichever direction the AI leads.

I'm not sure the cost of 3-4 extra defenders is really going to put much of a dent in my normal strategy as the AI is likely to send galleys/caravels with a single attacker instead of 3 ships full of attackers with 1 garrison.

Not much of a change for my typical game. By the time the AI can launch a sizeable amphibious attack, we're probably late-industrial/modern and I've got zero-movement-cost defenses, meaning I can likely continue to skimp. Where the AI will have 2 units(at least) per city, I'll probably have more like 2 cities per unit. (Edit: Clarification: 2 (coastal) cities per (dedicated rear-guard) unit.

Doesn't seem like much of an AI advantage and it gives the human even more flexibility in gaining a beachhead without being counter-attacked.

Just my opinion. I'd be willing to test it, but it doesn't - superficially - seem to give much to the AI and it doesn't seem to alter my playstyle in any meaningful way. 3-6 extra offensive defenders in the middle ages sounds pretty minimal to me. YMMV based on difficulty level.

[alexman]

Originally posted by ducki
Not much of a change for my typical game.

It would be a huge change from my typical game.

But even the fact that you are forced to defend your cities with Knights instead of leaving them undefended would help the AI. The gazillion bombarding Frigates would then have a target that they can easily redline, instead of wandering around idle. Are you going to risk leaving your city defended by a single Knight, which when redlined can be easily defeated by an amphibious Musketman? If not, then the AI investment in Frigates has paid off by tying down more of your resources. If yes, then you risk the possibility of an amphibious assult, which even if nothing more than a raid, would hurt you more than it hurt the AI to build those Frigates.

[Tall Stranger]

Originally posted by alexman

And how is this different than what you can do now? Just load Swordsmen and Spears and attack the turn after you land. The losses from attacking with low-attack amphibious units will likely be offset by the losses from the AI attack after you land.

Well, it allows me the sneak attack, before the AI can reinforce a target city, which I've seen it do much more of in C3C. It also prevents the AI from attacking the stack I laid down (meaning I can send more attack units and fewer defensive ones), which I've also seen it do quite a bit more in C3C.

Because the idea is to give the amphibious property to units with a relatively low attack strength.

But you originally said Archers and Longbowmen. Longbowmen would have a 5 attack as an amphib unit, making it a highly effective attack unit. It would attack better and be more mobile than Knights against coastal targets.

If you're now talking about musketmen et. al., we run into the problem vulture pointed out earlier. The AI won't use them to attack, even amphibiously, without the offensive flag. But if you flag them offensive, it will likely screw with their ability to lauch traditional land offensives.

As I said before, it would also let the human do extensive raiding that the AI won't do. We will sail, fully loaded with archers, across one or two sea/ ocean tiles, as long as we end our turn on a coastal one. The AI won't.

I still think the impact on human defenses will be minimal, but maybe some testing would make sense. I'd venture to bet that humans come out way ahead.

[alexman]

The original proposal, which I now like again ( ), was to add the Amphibious ability to Musketmen, Musketeers, Riflemen, and Infantry and to add the AI offense flag to Musketmen. See the initial post.

The AI will rarely use Musketmen for ground attacks, as it estimates the odds for winning before attacking. But finally, a use for the attack factor of those defensive units!

[Tall Stranger]

Originally posted by alexman

It would be a huge change from my typical game.

It seems to me, then, that the question is "Who's game is more typical?"

If your's is, then maybe this change makes sense. If mine/ducki's is, then (with all due respect, no insult intended) it seems unfair to make a change to AU just to make a minority of players' games more challenging/ interesting/ fun/ etc.

All the more reason to playtest this before incorporating it into the AU mod.

[vulture]

We could always get ultra-revolutionary, create a new unit (which is shockingly similar to the warrior, with the same stats and unit graphics, but no upgrade), tied to an AI-only, non-tradeable tech that all AIs start with, but which has the ampibious ability. Assuming you can create techs that are assigned to AI only at the start of a game (as opposed to specific civs).

This would give the AI an amphib unit whose only real use would be taking undefended cities, or capturing coastal workers (or be nasty and give it the ensave ability...), which wouldn't be available to the player. This gives the AI an ability that the human doesn't have of course, but the only real effect is that the human has to keep more units defending coastal towns to defend against freak results (15% chance of taking out a lone spearman). With the unit having the same cost and effect as a normal warrior, it doesn't matter if the AI builds them and uses them as per normal - it doesn't hurt it any compared to stock.


Don't really know how do-able this is though.

[vulture]

We could always test some of these changes for the next AU course - the power of apmhibious assaults!

[alexman]

Good idea, but it's not possible in the existing editor unless a map is attached to the mod so you can distinguish the human player from the AI.

[vulture]

That b*ggers that up then, which I rather suspected might be the case.

Just for the record, I don't think that this would change my game style a great deal personally. I tend to keep my coastal cities garrisoned anyway, pre-amphibious units. I have the impression, whether valid or not, that undefended cities are seen by the AI as an invitation to attack, and keeping them all with at least one defender lowers the chance that the AI will just come at you hoping to snaffle a quick city while you are off guard.

[Arrian]

RE: typical gameplay...

I tend to garrison all coastal cities with a defensive unit. Playing on Monarch, I can afford this. I suspect it is one of the first things I'd ditch if I ever get serious about moving up in difficulty level, though.

The fact is that it's unecessary. I could just have a few good mobile attackers stationed at proper spots, and this would cover my coastal cities. But I maintain real garrisons because a) it's a holdover from CivII play; b) it seems right (probably because of a); and c) because I feel that undefended coastal cities is just too tempting for the poor AI - they just can't resist. And I really hate wars sparked by the lone AI archer landing. They piss me off.

-Arrian

[Risa]

Originally posted by alexman
The AI will rarely use Musketmen for ground attacks, as it estimates the odds for winning before attacking. But finally, a use for the attack factor of those defensive units!

But they will count musketmen as offensive force, thus reduce the number of their true attacking units.

[alexman]

True, although they will not produce many of them due to their low attack value of 2. Just like they don't build many Guerillas when they have rubber, even though they do build some of them.

[ducki]

Like I said above, I don't think this change would appreciably change the game in the way I think we want to - no deeper strategy, no "real" help to the AI, although it could be a lot of fun for the human.

That aside, though -
I dislike the idea of giving Muskets the special power of a UU so close to the UUs 15 minutes. Any way to attach Musket's amphibiousness to Caravels?

Rifles and Infantry is believable, but, IMO, too late to do the AI any good and just means the human can launch non-retaliatable city attacks without having to research the Marine's tech.


It may all come down to playstyle - if I really felt this would change my defense plans meaningfully or actually give the AI a shot at sneaking in and taking a beachhead, I'd be 100% behind it, but as it is, I think it would just encourage the AI to waste those shields.

It would, however, make the Coastal Fortress minorly more attractive, perhaps.

The more I think about it, the more important playstyle and difficulty level are when looking at this change. I'm willing to try it out, I'm just skeptical, that's all.

[alexman]

Originally posted by ducki
It would, however, make the Coastal Fortress minorly more attractive, perhaps.

Minorly? Perhaps?

With no amphibious units, why would you ever build a coastal fortress? Only when the city is also threatened by a ground attack.

If you defend your city, the AI hits the defending units, which immediately heal in the next turn. So why risk the destruction of a CF if the AI bombardment does you no harm? OTOH, if you don't defend your cities, the AI will never bombard them, so why build a CF?