Unit Strengths by Era

[Jeffrey Morris FIRAXIS]

Thanks guys. This is very useful information.

Jeff

[player1]

Originally posted by halley
What about:

City walls give +50% to def vs. movement 2+ units, in addition to current bonuses

Cities with 7+ pop give +50% to def vs. movement 2+ units, in addition to current bonuses

Cities with 12+ pop give +100% def vs. movement 2+ units, in addition to current bonuses

I'm not a history expert, but I don't think Cavalry were used to assault cities. Their speed and maneuvrability would be severely limited if they had to fight in narrow city streets. Cavalry should be used for attacking units in the open, where their mobility gives them the advantage.

Also, artillery units need a boost. Right now, they are too weak.

Just look my post several pages up.

The best way is to make retreat IMPOSSIBILE when attacking cities with City Walls or cities with pop 7+. Forts should be included also.
But, tanks should be excluded (as all blizt flag units).

I think that is very elegant, and simple solution, which won't distrupt gameplay.

[Arrian]

Jeff,

Glad to give my input (though I seem to be in the minority on what should be done). I do agree that some balancing is needed. The game, as it plays right now, probably isn't exactly the way it was meant to be. You can really build a bunch of Cavalry and annihilate large empires in short periods of time, especially pre-nationalism. No combined arms necessary.

But I also think it's only partly the units, partly the AI, and maybe partly the defensive bonus rules. Player1's idea about disallowing retreat from cities or walled towns is pretty good, IMHO. 1) it probably deals with the game balance issue and 2) it makes more sense than the present rules. He's right - historically, unsupported Cavalry (read: horsemen, knights, cavalry) charges against walled towns with intrenched footsoldiers (of comparable technological advancement) was suicide.

-Arrian

[David Weldon]

I just had a better thought regarding an idea I posted last page:

Originally posted by David Weldon
Obsolete units being competetive vs. modern units was a design decision to prevent people without resources from being completely screwed. I understand the sentiment but think that it was a poor implementation. Instead...

Create "non-resource" versions of all units that simply cost more. You can balance the extra cost so that resources are just as important as they are now, and then you can introduce a more powerful obsolecense mechanic that will prevent all the whining about frigate v. sub, or spearman v. tank, etc.

OK, that's what I had to do because of the limitations of the editor, but you guys could do even better. Just add some code that increases the production cost of a unit if you don't have the required resource. This will have the added benefit that the finished unit would be exactly the same as a normal one, and therefore wouldn't be worth more when disbanded. It makes more sense, because the extra expense is due to difficulty in obtaining the raw goods necessary, while the finished product is still just a tank (or whatever).

I'll also briefly mention here that I think the cost of rushing units in the late game is too small. Empires by then have huge economies, and the cost of modern units is too low in comparison. This allows a giant "scientific, peaceful, builder" civilization to actually be the most powerful military nation by simply buying an immense military. Even mobilized communisms can't keep up.

[Foxglove]

Did I read this right?
Units (such as cavalry) should not be able to retreat if attacking a city/stack which has artillery in it, due to the bombardment range.
Sounds good if I got it right.

My points:

* Jaguar warrior will be unbalancing in a MP situation and may need modiying at a later date, but only for MP purposes.

* City walls in ancient era should get more of a defensive bonus imho. At present their effects seem negligable.

* Tanks should get a better defense rating, or there should be an upgrade route of tanks available, kind of like WW1 - WW2 - Present day tanks. I love tank warfare, but hate seeing a musketman or even a longbowman taking out my chunk of steel.
Also, i`d like to see automatic pillaging of enemy improvements if a tank is fortified on that enemy square. I mean these units in real life tore up whatever land they drove over. /shrug

* F-15 is a poor choice for the American UU. It comes to late in the game and ends up as just a glorified bomber, of which one usually has loads already. Suggest making it a non-UU unit and making it available as an upgrade for the basic propellor fighter.

I`d have preferred to have seen an American UU around the beginning of the industrial age, when the Americans were wiping the American Indians off the face of the continent. Perhaps call it a "Cowboy" unit or something with a +1 attack difference compared to a regular musketman. (And John Wayne if a leader is produced lol)

* The AI seems to like producing shedloads of ironclads, even when destroyers available. Granted that the AI`s ironclads always seem to sink my destroyers....even my battleships. But I don`t think ironclads had much "Shelf life" in history, perhaps only lasting 10-20 years or so in terms of usefulness (WW1 era)

* Cities with a coastal fortress and artillery in it should get an attack range to edge of cities culture line out to sea or something at least worthwhile to deter the enemy from getting close.
Coastal fortress remains a useless improvement imho.

* Almost forgot. Chariots. Useless as an attacking unit, and I only really use them as an exploration unit. Would like to see a +1 attack added to them making them 2,1,2, or if this is too unbalancing then just allow movement on roads and on grass/plains. Dunno.


Regards

--
Foxglove
--

[player1]

Despotic rush needs to be tweaked.

Why?

Becase of 1 pop city can be always made content with just one Mil. P. unit.

How to fix:
So you need to make some sort of NEGATIVE unhappines so 1 pop city wich rused 3 units should need 2 M.P. and Temple to stay content, not just one M.P. unit.

Also this startegy is very effective because of RAMPANT CORRUPTION.

So losing a pop is NOT A BIG DEAL.

[Sirian]

I agree with Player1: poprush can be exploited, because there are no additional penalties to small cities for rushing over and over. There SHOULD BE. It's fine to rush once, since at every difficulty level, there's at least one content citizen, period. However, for drafts and forced labor, there ought to be extra penalty accumulated that overwhelms the contentment factors. Right now, if you have a temple or (under communist/despotic) a military unit, no amount of unhappiness can erase that contentment. This is unbalanced. The unhappiness, rather than the contentment, deserves the priority. If unhappiness is large enough, nothing should be able to quell it, short of assigning every citizen in the city to specialist duty. I've seen that happen under democracy/republic, with captured cities and no temple, but even the temple should not be able to quell so much unrest.

If that sticks a thorn into the AI, then improve the AI so they rush less. Every AI I've seen is complete and hopeless TOAST once they go to communist anyway. They will erode their population in a hurry and fall by the wayside. The AI's are only a threat when they stay in democracy. That's been my experience. I'll even make a point of getting them to war with one another, because if one of them loses and is swallowed whole, the other will go into communist to do it and wreck themselves in the process. It's then east to outtech them all to the modern era and lay waste to them at my leisure. Even on Emperor. Communism actually blows, for the AI's at least. They aren't able to turn their forced production into military victory against a smart human opponent, and they just waste themselves in the process.

Allowing the human player to whip whip whip whip without any penalty for whipping too much, is unbalancing. Do whatever it takes to fix that, as it will completely distort and condemn the game for any MP action. The whip rush will be all there is to it if you fail to correct this. The whip is a great addition, but I don't think you have it balanced just yet.


I've been giving more thoughts to air units. The air game is the least well developed, has the most holes in it. I've already made some suggestions: move paratroops to Flight and drop the airport req, move carriers to adv flight, etc etc. I have new thoughts on this.

What good are veteran air units? These things don't have hit points like other units, so what USE is it to have them veteran?

What sense does it make to allow bombers to attack from any city, but not paratroops?

Airports right now are completely useless. You can't afford to build one where you need it for paratroops. It's not worth it even to rush one, under democracy, since paratroops can't compete with tanks anyway. Airports are so much more expensive than harbors, both to build and maintain, and so much more useless. This whole game system needs some changes.

I suggest not even allowing a player to BUILD air units except in cities with an airport. Same goes for paratroops. Whether or not the units are "veteran" should depend on the presence or absence of barracks. Then allow all air units, including paratroops, to attack from any city or carrier. Allow units that drop from helicopters to attack or fortify or move on the same turn. I know that's huge, but it would give more use to marines and modern combined arms, and it would make air superiority vs the AI much more urgent, as even a mildly competent AI use of such aggression would pose a serious threat. Players would then have to build much more airforce, not just to fight off bomber annoyances, but to stop helicopters from penetrating behind the lines. The AI would also have to place much more importance on air superiority in its own territory. As it should. Give this phase of the game some teeth. It deserves more than it has. Fighters right now are mainly just weak bombers. They ought to be VITAL defense units. And give any city with an airport a bonus to any units running air superiority missions there.

At the very least, allow paratroops to launch and attack on the same turn. This is the only thing that made them useful in Civ2.

F-15's in particular ought to be dominating at air superiority. Give them a stronger attack value. There also needs to be an aggressive offensive option for fighters, to challenge the enemy for air superiority over its own lands... something that goes beyond the current "attack/defense" values, as the defenders should have the advantage in that regard, with radar support and SAM support, etc.

Also, Sattelites ought to introduce new bonuses to air units. If you need some rationale for this, I direct you to examine the results in Afghanistan.


- Sirian

[DaBear]

Outposts

In the leadup to the release of civ 3 one of the flags that was being waved was for outposts. With outposts being swallowed by the boarders of culture there dosn't seam to be a big requirment to use them over a settler. Never seen an AI build one. They would be much more usefull if the had some culture of there own and able to resist a settler ploping down beside them. Needing a oposing culture to sway them over. (temple library ect.) Not quite a unit so I may be alittle off topic here.

[Aeson]

Workers and the Patch

I don't know if anyone has brought this up already or not, but workers have had their automation trashed by the patch. Automated workers won't stack more than 2 per tile, and this really makes pollution cleanup miserable in the late game. Usually 10 - 15 workers can keep up with a good sized empire's pollution problem, but having to manually move them onto the pollution is inane and boring, why the change? Before the patch I could just hit shift-p and off they went until all the pollution was gone. Now only the first two go to each patch, and if they are captured workers it takes several turns for them to clean up the pollution. Even with home grown workers it takes 2 turns to clean up(non industrious), losing a whole turn of production from that square. I can, and do, put enough workers on each spot of pollution every turn anyways, but it just takes a lot more work now. I was just finishing up a game where turns took nearly 10 minutes to complete, doing nothing other than cleaning up pollution. And even then there were turns when I missed spots of pollution because it's hard to keep track of 20-50 places every turn. Please change this back to how it was.

[steelehc]

* The AI seems to like producing shedloads of ironclads, even when destroyers available. Granted that the AI`s ironclads always seem to sink my destroyers....even my battleships. But I don`t think ironclads had much "Shelf life" in history, perhaps only lasting 10-20 years or so in terms of usefulness (WW1 era)

I must comment on Ironclads.

They were first built in the American civil war, as you know, the Monitor and the Merrimac (Virginia) were the first two ever built. However, they were not useless after this point. The US Navy built a massive fleet of ironclad warships, and maintained them until 1910. The Great Lakes fleet was also made up largely of ironclads, and this was kept until abour 1915. Thats more then 50 years of ironclads, directly tying them into modern warships.

I agree with everything else you have said, especially the "cowboy."

Steele

PS: Bring back the Cruiser, please!

[Foxglove]

Thanks for the info Steelehc.
Never knew that......

Regards

--
Foxglove
--

[player1]

Something about unit flags:

in 1.16f these units have THE_WHEEL flag:
Catapults
Cannons
Chariot
War Chariot

So you NEED to UPGRADE civilopedia
(is it intentional to have TANKs without the_wheel flag?)


in 1.16f these units do not have ZOC flag anymore:
Horsemen
M. Warrior
Rider

So you NEED to UPGRADE civilopedia

Communism has in editor 2 units draft rate, while in civilopedia 3 unit draft

So you NEED to UPGRADE civilopedia (or give communism 3 units draft)

Conclusion:

So you NEED to UPGRADE civilopedia

P.S.

These land units can't be airlifted:

Settler (I can understand, a lot of people)
Worker (I can understand, a lot of people)
Scout (why, it is just ordinary unit)
Explorer (why?)
Catapult (Why? You can airlift tank)
Cannon (why?)
Artillery (why?)
Radar Artillery (why?)
Leader (Why, presidents today do not use planes?)
Army (ok by me, it is more units anyway)

P.P.S.
I posted this at bugs topic, but since it is about UNIT FLAGS I think it would be nice to have it here also.

P.P.P.S
And I thought that first patch is Civililopeda patch.

[vmxa1]

The ironclad may have been around 50 yrs, but what did ours do? Not much.

[pcasey]

The question is, when does a ship cease to be an ironclad and start to be something else? Where in the history of ship design to we draw the line?

Do we say "Iron Clads are wooden hulled vessels with Iron Armor overlays?"

If so, The monitor, Merrimac and Gloire (frennch) are all Ironclads.

HMS Warrior, launched on Dec 29th 1860, however, was an all iron warship and she was launched *before* the monitor and the merrimac making them obsolete as soon as they were launched.

Do we take a more permissive definition and say that an ironclad is any warship with an iron rather than steel superstructure?

If so, the first all steel ships were coming off British and French production lines in the late 1870s.

Which makes the age of the Iron Clad about 20 years.

The problem with trying to decide when Iron Clads became obsolete is trying to figure out exactly what *is* an ironclad. People have this mental image that everyone in the world built lots of erickson monitors until 1906 when HMS dreadnaught changed the world.

The reality, of course, is quite a bit more complex. First there were wooden ships, then there were wooden ships with Iron armor. Then there were iron ships. Then there were steel ships. Then there were more and more advanced steel ships. Eventually, Dreadnaught was launched.

So when along that timeline did warships cease to be ironclads and become something else? Its not as cut and dry as we'd like to believe.

[Sirian]

The Wheel flag prevents units from traversing mountain/jungle without a road. Don't tell me tanks need roads.

If tanks can be airlifted, that's a serious bug. I never even tried it, because both logic and the game docs say it won't happen. Heh.

Oh yeah, and allow armies to unload or AT LEAST to upgrade units. That is just not realistic, nor does it make sense to me in the game balance. No nation would purposely prevent its best armed forces with the richest traditions from access to the best available tech, training, and equipment. Quite the opposite! This could help the AI's, too. They get lots of armies. Oh wait, they never upgrade anything anyway, so what use?


- Sirian