Unit Strengths by Era

[Arrian]

You can always disband an army and get huge amounts of shield to help build cheap wonders anyway.

Incorrect. Disbanding units (even armies) will have no effect on Wonder production - same as forest chopping. There is nothing that can hurry along a wonder except the use of a leader.

-Arrian

[ffitzp]

Guerillas are too weak. I favour giving then ZOC, withdraw rights, and cutting their defense to 5 as a balance.

[dexters]

Not true. I usually don't use them because in my of my games so far, I've been able to secure rubber. But Guerillas can stop Cavalry cold. I've seen a rubberless AI use guerilla effectively to totally offset Cavalry's field advantage. This is what it is meant to do. There is a short span where Guerillas are effective and can essentially nullify a late middle age Cavalry army cold, if you have enough Guerillas defending.

But coming at Replacable parts, tanks is just a few turns away and they get overpowered.

Another thing that continues to bother me is that the AI still has trouble putting emphasis on upgrading. In my most recent game, ROME has 32 medieval infantry units that weren't being upgraded. I then gave it a large lump sum in return for gpt payments (banker) and it managed only to upgrade 4 of the Medieval infantry.

Guerilla is a unit that has potential to give the AI a stronger chance at surviving those early late game wars where Cavalry remains the king. Even against tanks, they do ok in well fortified areas. The AI that manages to upgrade their legacy units seem to be the richer ones, which is fine, but it is the weaker ones, especially those without rubber, that must place an even higher priority or face total irrelevance on the battle field.

On a side note, while many improvements have since been made to the AI, a lot of what Arrian, Vel et al. discussed in the first pages of the thread regarding AI's unthiking and often suicidal attack patterns persists into PTW. Their mobile offensive units still tend to get caught out in the open where they can be picked off, although I've seen Cavalry retreating to a city immediately after killing a unit on a stack. But I can't be sure if the AI is practicing a human strategy of keeping their offensive units well protected in between turns or is simply following its desire to heal units when damaged.

Stack movements is somewhat better with multiple stacks often coming at multiple points. But AI is still far too linear in the OFFENSE/DEFENSE orientation. Kill its attacking units and the AI is helpless. Simply surround each city with your units, conquer and repeat. I'd like to see the AI shift its defensive units up front to prevent what I call, the passive reaction to doom syndrome, where the AI will quite literally have healthy garrisons in the backline that can stop an attack cold or slow it down considerably until new attacking units can be built. Instead of leveraging their forces, they simply sit there and watch its frontline cities taken one by one. The old divide and conquer strategy. On the same token, new offensive units built should be valued highly and perhaps give an AI a preference to wait until enough has been built to launch a counterattack or employ a strategy of attacking from a city/mountains against stacks where the natural bounce will place it right back into a defensible position. Perhaps doubling the valuation of offensive units when its ratio to defensive units is low can force the AI to not just throw their new units out 2 at a time.

AI naval invasions are still bleh... I've studied how the AI invades with the help of the PTW debug mode and there are a few things they should fix. And I don't think it will require a major rewrite. I have initially planned to write a case study on this, and I may still do it, but in case I don't get around to it, the suggestions I would have... if anyone at Firaxis is still reading, is to co-ordinate naval invasions like a land stack. Instead of multiple galleons or escort/transport pairs acting independently and often very inefficiently in picking up troops and dropping them off, the AI should simply pick a spot on your map, load up its troops, move them to some point out in the sea and move in all at once. There couple perhaps be an alterate strategy to the above idea where the AI will split its forces and attack multiple points or timed attacked to have fresh troops arriving over multiple turns.

The disccusion on Marines earlier is important here. The AI do use them somewhat more frequently now, but they need to use them as the tip of the spear. At minimum a transport with 8 units of marines is required.

This will not fix the ineherent weakness of the AI in naval invasion and may not result in anything significant against seasoned players, but if you play the odds, and Civ III AI decision making seems to be built on playing the odds, you can score a higher chance of success against human and more importantly against other AI civs by landing more units instead of going piecmeal.

An interesting find in my study is that AI naval invasion forces are too fickle. It will literally sail back and forth between targets when their targets are A) Captured by the same Civ's forces B) Captured by an Ally. If B occurs, well, perhaps there is good reason, but what I find strange is that the AI transport ships would prefer to move to the next target (often sailing vast distances to get there) rather than to continue on and reinforce the garrison at the landing site if A occurs. It proves to me that there is no sense of coordination at ALL. The leader AI needs to know that 2 offensive units (often laughably outdated units) on a beachead is not enough to hold it for very long even against AI players. I'm sure if you poll Civ players here,I don't think you'll find very many players who has seen an AI civ successfully attack and take cities of another AI player on another continent. What the AI is good at is using naval invasions to take out the odd poorly defended island outposts.

From a gameplay perspective, AI civs that can do better at invading on an intercontinental scale can make things much more interesting. Even if human players can fend such invasions off, AI civs may not, and it would be nice to see some of the intercontinetal wars result in something more substantive than the usual phoney wars and minor skirmished. An AI civ landing a force that actually takes cities, holds them and take more cities as reinforcements come in will change the dynamic of a game quickly. Right now, if a Civs on differently continents are effectively not a threat to anyone on other land masses, with the possible exception of island holdings.

[detton]

Hi. This is detton, long time civ3 player, first time caller.

a lot of people argue about how overpowering units can be, i.e. the swordsman in the ancient era, or horseman, blah, blah, blah, and i think that the only reason they are powerful is because the computer doesn't know how to counter them. personally, i never have a problem with enemy swordsmen because i use horsemen to engage them. i never have a problem with horsemen because i wait until i can engage them in terms that are favorable to me. the computer doesn't know how to "think outside the box." ok, this thread is about _unit strength_ though, so enough about that.

The Submarine: subs just aren't that great because capital ships have always been able to deal with them, and there are no merchant ships for them to prey on, which is what they were always used for.

The Marine: the marine isn't that useful because his stats compared to his cost isn't great and the niche that he fills is so small that it makes someone really wonder if you need him _that_ much. honestly though, i don't think his niche will ever get much bigger without changing the game significantly. i suggest making his cost cheaper, or giving him a small boost in stats.

The Paratrooper: paratrooper should come earlier in the game (Germany and U.S. used them in WW2). i suggest their stats should be pretty much identical to infantry, because they are infantry that are dropped behind enemy lines for take and hold missions, however maybe a system should be added that makes it so there is a chance the unit be damaged when dropped (parachuting is tricky business), and/or the paratrooper unit has a chance of missing the intended landing zone and so lands to a random square adjacent to it (parachuting isn't always accurate).

i've got nothing new to say about UU's.

detton
=?

[vmxa1]

You could even make a case for Paratroopers being a bit stronger than Infantry. In WWII they were elite troops, better trained and higher caliber than regular infantry which are draftees mainly.

[Mad Bomber]

Originally posted by dexters
Not true. I usually don't use them because in my of my games so far, I've been able to secure rubber. But Guerillas can stop Cavalry cold. I've seen a rubberless AI use guerilla effectively to totally offset Cavalry's field advantage. This is what it is meant to do. There is a short span where Guerillas are effective and can essentially nullify a late middle age Cavalry army cold, if you have enough Guerillas defending.

But coming at Replacable parts, tanks is just a few turns away and they get overpowered.

.

I have modded Guerillas to 7/7/2 *ignore rough terrain and they work like a charm. They are perfectly suited for the attack or the defense and are great at pillaging. I tend to use these to supplant cavalry as my main attacker from the time I research Replaceable parts to getting tanks.

[Gravity Happens]

Originally posted by notyoueither:
"Nobody has brought this up yet, so here goes.


1. Nukes (ICBMs). I have seen enemy nukes hit my cities with approx 40 or 50% success rate after I have completed Strategic Missile Defense. I have been hit 4 times out of 8 or 10 AI attempts. Conversely, I have launched about 20 nukes back at the AI and have only hit twice. This is all in the same game. I am stretching the boundaries of probability and am beginning to suspect a bug.

The truly queer thing about the AI use of nukes is target selection. My original city (no longer capital) was targeted once (it hit). Most of the other attempts and hits were at cities of marginal value to me (no-where near fully developed, and only 6 to 12 pop). One marginal city was hit twice and targeted at least one other time.

The AI was no-where near any of the targeted cities with ground units (or any others for that matter) so the tactical situation cannot explain the targeting. Likewise, most of the cities were not air or sea links in my trade network, so disruption of communications was not the goal.

The AI launches at most 1 nuke per turn at my cities (maybe this affects the odds?). I launched 6+ on 1 strike and 10 later in another strike. 1 hit each. I tried a single ICBM on several other occasions with no luck."



I think I know whats going on here. Maybe you are being targeted by tactical nukes. Their chances of hitting aren't reduced by the strategic missile defence.

[Panag]

Originally posted by Gravity Happens
Originally posted by notyoueither:
"Nobody has brought this up yet, so here goes.


1. Nukes (ICBMs). I have seen enemy nukes hit my cities with approx 40 or 50% success rate after I have completed Strategic Missile Defense. I have been hit 4 times out of 8 or 10 AI attempts. Conversely, I have launched about 20 nukes back at the AI and have only hit twice. This is all in the same game. I am stretching the boundaries of probability and am beginning to suspect a bug.

The truly queer thing about the AI use of nukes is target selection. My original city (no longer capital) was targeted once (it hit). Most of the other attempts and hits were at cities of marginal value to me (no-where near fully developed, and only 6 to 12 pop). One marginal city was hit twice and targeted at least one other time.

The AI was no-where near any of the targeted cities with ground units (or any others for that matter) so the tactical situation cannot explain the targeting. Likewise, most of the cities were not air or sea links in my trade network, so disruption of communications was not the goal.

The AI launches at most 1 nuke per turn at my cities (maybe this affects the odds?). I launched 6+ on 1 strike and 10 later in another strike. 1 hit each. I tried a single ICBM on several other occasions with no luck."



I think I know whats going on here. Maybe you are being targeted by tactical nukes. Their chances of hitting aren't reduced by the strategic missile defence.

hi ,

if thats the case , it should be fixed , .....

however one intresting is to never sell your WM , ........ this seems to make the AI strike with nukes in the middle of nowhere , ....

have a nice day

[Last Conformist]

Only very marginally a game-balance issue, but the single most annoying thing about Civ III's combat system, IMHO, is the near total lack of offensive capacity for fire-arm infantry. It's the major realism issue with land combat, really.

The Musketman have less attack strength than have Swordsmen. 'Nuff said. The Rifleman and Infantry grantedly have the same attack stat as the Knight and Cavalry units, respectively, but at higher costs, slower speed and no retreat they can't really compete. Not to mention that if you can build Riflemen, you very probably can build Cavalry also.

I think Civ II was on the right track with the same attacka and defense values on gunpoweder Infantry, so at a first hunch, I'd suggest these units becoming 4.4.1, 6.6.1 and 10.10.1. Game testing and further balancing would, no doubt, be needed. But with stats along these lines, Musketmen and Riflemen would become sensible alternatives to Knights and Cavalry on offense, and WWI-style Infantry would become the primary offensive unit of it's era, as it should.

Naturally, the stats of Musketeers, Guerilla, Paratroopers and Marines would have to be reconsidered under a change of this kind. While at it, I'd like to see Guerilla being not merely a worse version of the Infantry, but also a cheaper one.

I realize this probably rathe for Civ IV than for any patch or expansion of Civ III, but I wanted to add it to the melting pot.

[Gen.Dragolen]

Correcting Unit Attack Strengths

Last,

The game designers were looking to make a theatre strategy combat system and came up with a version of chess a la Risk. Attrition wins the day.

I have tested the combat model with some of the changes you mentioned, and it does make some difference, but since the AI usually will not upgrade many of it's units in a timely fashion, it gives an unfair advantage to the human players. It is my hope that in testing against other human players that it would not be as great a problem.

Increasing the attack strengths of units is only part of the problem. Since many details like morale and logistics are not a consideration, and there is no sense of scale (ie what size of units: company, battalion, regiment or division) you are not able to adequately understand the type warfare in anyway that coincides with our understanding of warfare, modern or historical.

Then there is the problem of technology. Starting with the US Civil War and following through the Franco-Prussian War and into WW I, inventions that increased firepower like the gatling gun, the machine gun. breach loading artillery and high explosive shells made the battlefields into mass graveyards. It was the advent of the Canadian Divisions working together at Vimy Ridge in 1917 that showed the world how to conduct prepared infantry assaults and do it with a minimum of casualties.

This leads me to wonder why there is no advance that reflects the combined arms concept and the ability to stack units together to add their attacking and defensive strengths. There should also be a stacking limit to just how many units you can place in one given square. The current model only allows for a battle of attrition with luck and weight of numbers the deciding factors.

Since the game designers added Great Leaders to form Armies and stack units together, they should have made this the normal means of combat: stack versus stack. I have played other games like CtP 2 where the idea was poorly implimented but still better than a mere battle of attrition. In wargames like Third Reich there were stacking limits, logistic concerns and movement ranges to consider. I would equate Civ III's combat to be on a similar scale and level of detail.

Some of the changes I would add would include all units having at least a movement rate of 2 since they should all be able to retreat. It isn't always going to be the generals that decide if they will retreat, so the current system of a percentage chance is very good. This is because most of the casualties historically don't happen during the fight, but afterwards during the flight from the battlefield and even then loosing only 10 % of your numbers during the battle was not unusual. Losing another 50% during the route was usual. The idea of unit hit points is an over simplification since morale is more important that the number of bodies in a unit and the firepower of their weapons. A badly shot up unit with high morale can still inflict punishing casualties on a full strength unit of lesser morale given similar weapons.

So what we need to improve the combat system are the following changes:

1. Ability to stack with similar units to perform combined arms operations, even in the ancient age.
2. Stacking limits for how many units may occupy a single square.
3. Adding a Morale rating to units to reflect the inate quality of good leadership, and brings up the possibility of mutiny if morale falls too low.
4. Connecting variable combat values of a given unit, to their hitpoints and morale.
5. Bombardment should also be able to do damage to hitpoints and morale.
5. Increased base movement rates to allow for all units to retreat from combat.

This does complicate things for the programmers, but since the AI is already capable of limited combined arms operations now, there shouldn't be too much more code to add to impliment these ideas.
However, in terms of game balance, Morale mitigates the value of technology, and keeps older units still useful against technologically superior opponents. Battles can still be won by inferior units this way. After all, even partizans and guerillas can play merry hell with the best profesional troops. Making the combat values increase and decrease according to their morale and hit points would be the best way to even the battle field. It makes good units all the more valueable and gives them better staying power. It also allows for stalemates. You cannot fight an enemy to a standstill in the current game.

In the mean while, I have been toying with the idea of adding generals as a means to put together an army even back in ancient times and upping the movement rates. But until the changes I've suggested are even considered, we will still be left with just the usual wars of attrition.

D.

[Last Conformist]

What your suggesting sounds more like replacing than rebalancing the combat system to me.

There's, of course, already a simplistic representation of morale included - more experienced units can take more beating before breaking, which is perfectly realistic as far as it goes. At the level of abstraction we're looking at, I see little reason to differentiate between material damage and demoralization - both are chiefly inflicted by enemy action and both lessens combat worthiness.

Something I definitely wants back, preferably in developed form, is SMAC's system where mobile units got a bonus in open terrain, and infantry in bases (cities). That 1800s-style Riflemen are outclassed by Cav in open terrain is odd, but that the Cav are vastly better at capturing fortified cities is outrightly ridiculous.

[Arrian]

The AU (Apolyton University) Mod does address the weak attack value of Infantry. If I recall correctly, they increased Inf from 6 to 8 attack. I don't remember if they tweaked Riflemen or Musketmen.

As for making them 4/4, 6/6, 10/10... well, since the fortification bonus in CivIII is only 25% (as opposed to 50% in CivII), I'd be more inclined to say 3/4, 5/6, 8/10. Charging other infantry w/o heavy bombardment *should* be fairly suicidal.

That said, I'm not really big on mods, and I'm fine with the current unit stats.

-Arrian

[vmxa1]

I do not use mods either as I have enough trouble remember what the values are now, without two sets of them or more.

[Gen.Dragolen]

vmxa1,

I hear you. With even more units coming in Conquest, I'll really need to keep the unit lists close at hand.

And yes, what I wrote previously does sound like a total reworking of combat, but it would correct the weakest feature in the game. With all the effort they put into make the rest of the game in wonderous detail, to have only half-assed the combat system is puzzling.

In any case, that was one of the reasons they gave us an editor with lots of access to the game settings and I'm having fun just playing with that and seeing how the game responds to changes.

I just get tired of the same old wars of attrition every time that's all.

D.

[vmxa1]

I think that it is fine to tweak the game to suit ones preferences. I don't care much for the more extreme stuff, though.