Unit Strengths by Era

[DeepO]

Sorry if I repeat things here, I didn't read all of the above.

Personally I think the musketman-cavalry-rifleman-infantry combination quite balanced, and I wouldn't touch it much. Maybe a little tweaking with a decreased chance of retreating whether a city is walled, or when defensive artillery is available could help, but do not change the mobility advantage, nor the upgrade-to-tank some want! Cavalry has its use in modern times, costs much in resources in industrial times, and can be countered using lots of strategies (catapults and cannons). And the mounted UUs are also fine (Samurai are indeed not very helpfull, but you have to see all advantages of the Japanese)

I totally agree that the French musketeer is useless, and although the French combine very powerfull specific attributes, a 4-4-1 version would be better. Or perhaps let them be built without salpeter, that would also be good.

Also, I too think the ironclad comes too early, and the wooden ships are gone too easily. I love those frigate - man-of-war - caravel battles, and this is completely destroyed by the ironclad. But instead of delaying it, maybe you could change the movement rate of ironclads, or confine them to coastal, or sea (so not ocean) squares. After all, historically ironclads never crossed the pacific, and IIRC they weren't terribly fast either. Maybe a movement of 2 would severely limit there uses. (I know they're allready slower than frigates, but not overly so)

Regarding upgrade cycles, I like the idea of having to use a unit in it's proper time frame, or better not build it. But, OTOH I also hate it when I have to disband valued swordsmen, and if not desperate I never build anything with a
bow. Maybe it would be an idea to let these units upgrade to infrantry once that is available, it is sufficiently far up the tech tree so you won't be able to upgrade your former attack force in a defensive force at once, but as there is no other one-movement attacker in industrial times, it kind of makes sense. Plus, the upgrade would be costly, the difference in build cost is high.
But, cavalry has horses, and thus do not upgrade to anything without horses, certainly not to tanks or MAs. That would totally unbalance their use, they are powerfull units, do not exagerate it.

DeepO

[barefootbadass]

Originally posted by DeepO

I totally agree that the French musketeer is useless, and although the French combine very powerfull specific attributes, a 4-4-1 version would be better. Or perhaps let them be built without salpeter, that would also be good.

That would be useless too, no better attack than the knight and costs more, musketeer would be good if they had made it 2/5/1 and the same cost and resource req as musketman. It would make the french the one civ whose musketmen were possibly worth the cost over pikemen to build or upgrade all.

This wouldn't be at all unbalancing, at least less than the greek hoplites, hmmm, which should I build? 1 musketman or 3 hoplites? let me see here...

and the cossack, as someone said earlier, ouch! no upgrades to or above them, and their only bonus is 1 on defense . . . on an ATTACKING unit. Haven't played the russians yet, but against them I find my calvary have no trouble, because they are never fortified or anything like that when coming at me. actually that extra defense point could be put to good use, by stacking a few of them to defend a hill or mountain or something with a fortress so that they can retreat and wear out attackers, but the ai has no concept of how to use this.

[art_vandelai]

I think maybe the best way to deal with the overpowered cavalry issue is to reduce the cavalry stats. Also, to balance out, the defense strength of Infantry and Riflemen should come down somewhat, so that once infantry is reached, it doesn't totally remove the prospect of attacking until tanks arrive, however the big battles of the era would be infantry vs. infantry, with cavalry used mainly to wear down the main forces. I'd also bump up the attacking ability of some of the early rifle units as well.

Here's what I'd change:

Knights - reduce to 3.2.2
Cavalry - reduce to 4.3.3
Cossack - make them 5.3.3
Riflemen - make them 5.5.1
Infantry - make them 7.7.1
Tank - change to 12.5.2

The result - longbows actually become useful (first 4 point attack until cavalry) when combined with pikemen, and musketmen can provide useful defense (and French musketeers reasonable offense) in the early game. Early offensive wars will likely be slower in progressing without a massive numerical advantage, but in terms of game balance, it makes sense.

[Harper]

This is really the first time I have had what I might thin is a constructive critiscisim, so pardon if it seems obvious to everyone. I would say that the two UU that seem to have the least reason to use them are the always hated Musketers' for the french. That extra point of attack is utterly useless. It is esentialy a less than 50% chance at winning in an attack against the comparable defending musket man.
The other one that really kind of annoys me is the War elephant. I think the graphic and the idea is really cool but the supposed bonus, ie not needing horses is really over rated. You will not really be able to trade the extra horse resource to anyone if you have them in your borders, Which in my experience is always, because every one else will have them by then as well.
It would be better if they had an extra attack or deffense, I would lean to the defense but then maybe they are two simmilar to the samurai then I don't know.

They would be the units that I would seriously want to see changed in some way.

[vmxa1]

One more problem with the War Elephant is that once you get Calv, you can not make them anymore? I played a few days ago and only made one. I then upgraded it and later thought why not make one to trigger a GA, no can do. I lost my UU all together. This may be a patch isue as I had done that type of thing before with Samauri and was able to make new ones.

[Dan Baker]

Re: Naval Issues

Originally posted by dconner

In particular, I think smaller ships should be able to do something that Battleships can't - faster movement, the traditional anti-submarine role, or something. Some sort of anti-aircraft specialized sea unit would be nice, too (this might be an AEGIS cruiser, available with an earlier tech.)

Actually, I think it should be the reverse. Battleships really aren't worth building except that they have are more powerful vs the maintance costs (these do add up.)

The big advantage of major capital ships has always been that they are way faster then the other ships of the fleet (and better armored). A cruising battleship was one of the fastest ships of its day, and this should be one of the major reasons for owning it (plus, its armor should be upgraded a bit.) A destroyer, on the other hand, shouldn't be as powerful (but cheaper). They are designed for sub-removal and don't stand a prayer against a battleship. In Civ-III they have a 50/50 shot... way too high. Civ-III's destroyers are really cruisers, not destroyers, so I guess its ok.

[Dan Baker]

Originally posted by DeepO
Sorry if I repeat things here, I didn't read all of the above.



Also, I too think the ironclad comes too early, and the wooden ships are gone too easily. I love those frigate - man-of-war - caravel battles, and this is completely destroyed by the ironclad. But instead of delaying it, maybe you could change the movement rate of ironclads, or confine them to coastal, or sea (so not ocean) squares. After all, historically ironclads never crossed the pacific, and IIRC they weren't terribly fast either. Maybe a movement of 2 would severely limit there uses. (I know they're allready slower than frigates, but not overly so)
DeepO

Historically, Ironclads were not that sea-worthy. I think they should be available, but not able to saftly travel ocean squares, and slow as dirt. That would even things out.

[Jaybe]

Originally posted by Dan Baker
Historically, Ironclads were not that sea-worthy. I think they should be available, but not able to saftly travel ocean squares, and slow as dirt. That would even things out.

I believe that Ironclads also represent iron-clad ships of the post Monitor/Merrimac era. Post American Civil War many steam-powered ocean-capable ships also were "iron-clads" on both sides of the Atlantic.

[korn469]

If anyone at firaxis is still reading this, i'm not sure if anyone has mentioned this, but because of the retreat function armies are even further handicapped.

I did some testing and it with Armies and it appears that each time a single unit in the army retreats it subtracts a movement point from the entire army. So if a player has four modern armor units in an army, they start off the turn beside two enemy mech infantry and then attack, if the first unit has to withdraw from the attack then the entire army lost a movement point. If worse comes to worse and a second unit has to break off the attack but the army still wins then unfortunantly the army won't have any movement points left.

A fix would be if at most even if multiple units broke off the attack the army would only lose one movement point. Another fix which would also make armies more powerful (as it is armies are weak because a player loses major flexability when using armies, and armies are VERY expensive for what they do) would be that units could break off the attack without causing the army to lose any movement points. Only if the army retreated as a whole would it lose any movement points.

Armies need all of the help they can get, plus with fast attackers like cavalry and modern armor the player can achieve the same results of weakening a defender while keeping their troops alive if they make sure their units have at least one extra movement point to retreat with when they start the attack. Although armies are hard to kill, the overall loss of multiple attacks negates much of the armies ability on offense. Couple that with modern armor apparently lose their blitz ability when stacked in an army, and the fact that armies can't even pillage armies have very limited roles which in almost all cases could be better handled without going to the expense of building an army.

Thanks

[Qilue]

The following are the changes I made to my own games.

Musketman, shields 50, att 3

Seemed appropiate.

Musketeer, shields 50, move 2

To simulate their ability to dash around France on missions for the king.

Explorer, tech req Map Making

Someone earlier mentioned that by the time explorers are available, most of the map is explored. Not quite correct IMHO, by the time I usually get Navigation, most of the map has cities on it.

Radar Artillery, move 2

So they can keep up with the mech infantry.

Carrier, move 5

Purly to eliminate the annoyance factor of having to count out the escort's movement so it doesn't leave the carriers behind.

Destroyer, move 6

So destroyers can be slightly more than just a cheap and inferior version of a battleship.

Aegis cruiser, move 7, att 14, def 12, bomb 8

The standard version seemed to me to be little more than a marginally better destroyer that could see submarines and cost more to build, yet it's supposed to be 'the' modern era warship.

[Arrian]

Originally posted by barefootbadass

and the cossack, as someone said earlier, ouch! no upgrades to or above them, and their only bonus is 1 on defense . . . on an ATTACKING unit. Haven't played the russians yet, but against them I find my calvary have no trouble, because they are never fortified or anything like that when coming at me. actually that extra defense point could be put to good use, by stacking a few of them to defend a hill or mountain or something with a fortress so that they can retreat and wear out attackers, but the ai has no concept of how to use this.

I always wondered what would happen if the Russians or Japanese fortified their UU's in cities w/walls and waited for my Cav to roll on in. That 4 defense is still lower than my 6 attack, but oh my, I'd definitely lose some Cavalry. As it stands now, getting one of my units killed is a rarity. Samurai and Cossacks have the potential to do bad things to attacking Cav, particularly if they are in big cities, or in cities on hills, or up on a mountain... etc.

-Arrian

[barefootbadass]

Originally posted by Arrian


I always wondered what would happen if the Russians or Japanese fortified their UU's in cities w/walls and waited for my Cav to roll on in. That 4 defense is still lower than my 6 attack, but oh my, I'd definitely lose some Cavalry. As it stands now, getting one of my units killed is a rarity. Samurai and Cossacks have the potential to do bad things to attacking Cav, particularly if they are in big cities, or in cities on hills, or up on a mountain... etc.

Heh, I bet if you changed those units to defensive in the ai strategy box you'd find those civs much tougher to wipe out. They'd probably still attack too because the units have good attacking odds. Would be interesting to try that out and see how it works.

[Raion]

I took a suggestion from a Reader Reviewer at Gamespot, who said he modded the rules to multiply by 1, 2, 3, 4, the different eras.
I have not fully tried this yet, but I modded the rules, by factor of 0, 1, 2, 3 for the different eras.
The rest will be up to players who have more time to play the game more than I do at the current time.

But this gives defense of modern units like 54, 24 for destroyer and the such by multiplying by 3 in the modern era.
Well, besides really trying it and changing the availability of resources to more like something like 400 for iron instead of 800 and up to 200 and the others so their is more length to the resources and more probability that resources will be there for every civ, which I think the patch did also something about, I have not fully tried it out.

[Raion]

Bombard was also changed and as such I have not tested anything yet, got sidetracked into trying the Apolyton Tournament 4 file, and well, had to go back to the original civ3mod.bic file.

[Raion]

Of course, that may make the game over quicker also if one can not keep up with the techs.
Still at Warlord, and really do not know if that will work at all.
i.e. multiplying the attack and defense of units by that much.