Unit Strengths by Era

[King of Rasslin]

The main advantage of the battlecruiser is its cheap cost. Make 4 battlecruisers and 12 ironclads. Wait 100 turns.

4 battlecruisers cost you 400 gold in unit support.
12 ironclads cost you 1200 in unit support.

But power wise, they are about the same. The 4 battlecruisers are about as strong as the ironclads, but they can't be spread out. However, they are actually cheaper to maintain! And... THIS IS WHAT IS WRONG WITH NAVAL COMBAT.

Why make a destroyer if you could make a battlecruiser? It's weaker, costs the same, but you can make it a little faster. Maybe you would make it in an urgent situation when you needed a ship NOW.

Subs have stealth, at least. Ironclads are industrial era units, so it is ok for them to be weak. Destroyers are weak. Really.

I think the more powerful units should have higher maintenance costs, or the destroyer should have benefits the battlecruiser doesn't. Ironclads are just fine, the frigates should be made stronger.

[dexters]

Destroyers need a bit of a movement boost, agreed. as for them being weak, it's ok. . Detroyers are not offensive units, other than being a screen for capital ships and escorting transports from subs.

[Dinner]

As long as we're talking about balancing unit power I thought I'd bring up the English Man-O-War. It is far less powerful and less useful then anyone else's UU; therefor I suggest that we let the English use it much earlier in the game. Although the Man-O-War would still be less powerful by giving it a longer life span the English could atleast milk it for all it is worth.

[Gen.Dragolen]

On a similar note...

Well, after having play tested some substantial changes to the Naval units, I went after the bomabrdment units to balance things out. This led to my doing some changes to the ancient units, just to see what effect it would have.

I used to think that catapults were almost useless units except maybe on defense, but now I have proof of it. Having fought almost continuously using catapults to soften up towns and villages before attackiing, I noted that only 1 attack in 8 actually hits. That one hit will do only 1 hp to a unit. The setting for this was a target size 1 village, with 1 spearman defending. Bombarded for 20 turns using 4 catapults. 1 hit destroyed the temple (the only buiding in the village) and I never did more than 1 hp to the spearman.

Last time I checked the stories about ancient siege engines, they were almost as nasty as a trebuchet for reducing buildings and fortifications. Not to mention their effect on the morale (and health) of units being attacked... a ballista could punch a hole through several rows of spearmen/hoplites/archers. Catapults flinging stone or urine would break up unit formations. Look at what the onagers and ballistae did in the battle scene in Galdiator.

Aside from the naval units being a joke, the bombardment code needs reworking. If I have a full siege train, then any ancient walled city will fall to me, unless relieved by friendly forces. I haven't had a chance to test the cannons and artillery yet, but I recall they worked a lot more consistently and with more impact.

What really made this apparent was that in the mod I'm working on, I reduced the attack strength of swordsmen to 2 and was unable to defeat a spearman without loosing 4-6 units in the assault. So Firaxis, let's get some decent combined arms happening for the ancient age. Let the catapults do something besides take space on the build list. Make Archimedes proud !

D.

[kring]

In 1.21, if you have lethal land bombard or lethal sea bombard, then you can kill the unit. If not, then you can't. In a bigger city, you could also kill people.

[Gen.Dragolen]

Originally posted by kring
In 1.21, if you have lethal land bombard or lethal sea bombard, then you can kill the unit. If not, then you can't. In a bigger city, you could also kill people.

Kring,

My point was that the unit is useless in an offensive role. It simply doesn't do anything useful because it never hits anything more often than 1 in 8. Simply increasing it's bombardment strength in the editor won't change that significantly. It will still miss 7 out of 8 and on the one good shot it will do 1 or 2 hits.

Now if it did 1 or 2 hits to all units in the beaten zone, then it might make up for it. But then you would still need 8 of them and that is ridiculous. The problem is that they made the swordsman unit what the catapults should have been. Add in that the units have uniform support costs when a siege train should be an expensive unit, like any mounted or chariot unit, costing at least double the support of an foot unit.

I still remember thinking that Vel's tactic of driving a stack of 10+ swordsmen into the heart of an enemies empire seemed off from a historical point of view, but since it worked, why not. The thing is, any decent archer can riddle a target advancing at a dead run over 100+ yards, with arrows not much different from what an ancient Egyptian charioteer might have used. Against the armour they had at the time, mostly leather with wooden shields, anyone running into a flight of arrows was most likely to get one. Drop the swords man to a 2/2/1 unit and they are a more flexible unit like they should be, not the damn queens of the battlefield.

It makes for amore interesting battle when archers and spearmen can stand against a swordsman. The swordsman are still a better choice for a battle, being cheaper to build and maintain, but when you lack iron in your empire, it evens the battle a bit. This brings me back to the problem with catapults. They should be able to reduce a village to ruins in the first turn and with 3 or 4 of them, even the combat units are going to take a beating. Especially if the units are regular troops that do it for a living.

If you doubt the power of the seige engines, check out the History channel's show about trebuchets. They build two full size trebuchets from the drawings in some 14th century manuscripts, and they were no less effective on tearing down fortifications than modern artillery. The only difference is range. A trebuchet can hurl a stone slightly further than a longbow can send an arrow. The show was supposed to show how Edward "Longshanks" had conquered the Scots with his Warwolf trebuchet. One 250 lb stone shot connected on a section of wall made as a target and it knocked a small hole in the front side and blew out a huge amount of stone and earthen fill from the inside of the wall.

If that isn't enough evidence for getting a unit changed for the better, there's more on the internet...

[King of Rasslin]

Don't make the swordsman a 2/2/1. It is a dead research path. They don't upgrade to anything.

If you are going to make them 2/2/1, make them upgradable to marines or riflemen. There seems to be a lack of powerful 1 movement units....

There has to be another unit created for the swordsman to upgrade to. Otherwise, they deserve an attack value of 3.

As for catapults, they are perhaps the worst unit in the game. Their only good point is that they can upgrade to cannons. Cannons are ok for damaging knights and musketmen in the open, but they can't damage cities very well. Artillery is so overpowered. I made a city 2 spaces from an enemy city and only made city walls. That was it. I based a dozen artillery there and a few infantry. He just took a beating without even scratching the city.

The catapult needs 6 bombard. The cannon needs 10. Artillery is fine as it is because of the range advantage. Radar artillery is so awful. But thats ok because the modern age is so screwed up anyway

I see why you don't like catapults. They really are that damn bad.

[punkbass2000]

I find catapults extremely useful, though not in taking cities. I find that if you take one hp off a unit in your territory, it will retreat. Also, in the open the catupult will hit most offensive units 75% of the time, I estimate, though I haven't done specific tests to confirm that.

[Geekinstein]

Humm, I use massed cats, 8-10 in a group along with about the same number of workers and a glob of pikemen and horsies/swords (& then knights when I can get them); sit next to alien cities, build forts and pound snot outta the black hats. The kewl thing about cats: they upgrade. Another is, there comes a time when nothing else is able to be developed that will upgrade except for the cats/cannons so build them waiting on the industrial/modern times and upgrade to artillery. BTW, veggie (veteran) cats seem to do OK. Plus, they be cheap vis-a-vis "real" units.

[Gen.Dragolen]

Change is Good, especially in mods

King,

I'll make them upgrade to pikemen or longbowmen. The idea is that for the ancient age, they were the shock troops. after thinking about the Scots and their claymores, swordsmen should upgrade to musketmen. (and gainsay who dare, laddie if you ken my meaning)

And yes the only good thing about catapults, at present, is that they upgrade to cannons. And I don't think increasing the bombardment strength will help as they still won't hit often enough to do anything useful. The point to keeping them at strength 4 was to balance against the ancient age units that mostly had a defensive strength of 2. City wall were there to make it damn hard for an enemy to take a city and the assaults were usually so costly that Sun Tzu's contemporaries thought that it was a desparate last act that would cost you half your army. Hence the need for guile, diplomacy and in my mind, many siege engines.
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Punkbass, I'll have to setup some test battles and use them on troops in the open and see if they hit any better. I seem to recall that they don't perform much better when I've used them that way in past battles...
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Part of the problem is that Firaxis seems to have skipped some developement work in making the units consistent and effective. Warfare from age to age hasn't changed all that much from when we used to use swords and spears. Specialist units are supposed to be force multipliers not subtractors, and because of the nature of hand to hand combat, morale was the main factor. As long as that held up, not many people died. As soon as an army broke, then the slaughter began.

(Another nice rule change possibility: no retreat for a defender/attacker if the target stack has a mounted unit)

The way I see what they tried to do was have the same roles for units in each age: foot soldiers, mounted, bombardment, naval (and later flying). As a game design, it would work nicely but they left out a medieval bombardment unit (trebuchet?) to replace the catapults, and left out any futuristic units like walkers or jump infantry that could deploy from orbit. The rest are ok, but unbalanced when it came to unit strengths. Musketeers should mowwed down swordsman and pikemen, while Musketeers should be mowwed down by riflemen who could shoot further and faster and them infantry should decimate riflemen because of the machinegun.

It makes keeping up in the technology race even more important and if you make things like espionage more affordable, then you should have a more interesting game. Well, it works better for me...

D.

[King of Rasslin]

Trebuchets! Man, there should be an immobile siege unit you can make outside of a city! I hope we can do that stuff in PTW!

[Gen.Dragolen]

Static Siege Unit ?

Originally posted by King of Rasslin
Trebuchets! Man, there should be an immobile siege unit you can make outside of a city! I hope we can do that stuff in PTW!

King,

Now that would be an interesting idea: offensive seige works that have a chance each turn of breaching the enemies defenses.

If most castles and cities were captured that way, and if the city walls are made the obstacle that they were in real life, then why not make it so in CivIII ?

Make it like building a fortification, and when complete, unless the enemy can drive off the attacking forces and capture the siege works, then the city falls with the units inside getting a chance to retreat or they die. A military version of culture bombing if you will.

If they won't improve catapults to make them usable, then give us another means. Imagine building a siege works against a fortification in some mountain choke point... an Epic Poem to a GL in the making. Like in AoK: " Nice town. I'll take it! "

D.

[Blake]

Easy fix to balance mobile units

One of the most effective fixes to the effectivness of mobile units, and their ability to retreat, is to make repairing cost a simialler number of resources to building the unit in the first place.
This would balance the game almost perfectely, as well as making it more realistic (because, if a unit is at 1/4 hitpoints, it means that three quarters of the troops have been KILLED and need to be replaced.).

It would still, generally be worthwhile repairing units for the elite bonuses. Understand that a unit healing at no cost is getting something for nothing, which cannot help but be unbalancing.

Unfortunately, this wouldn't work well in Civ3 because of the resource model, it'd basically have to steal repair costs by skimming some production from several bases... not very nice. (It did work in CTP2 mods, because of public works)

The other thing which could be done is making "field repairs" less effective than in-base repairs, ie the last HP is only healed in a base. The no healing in enemy territory is a good start, though.

[muxec]

New sub-era.

About strength and about eras.
I think that nuke units overpowered. Waste effect low and if you get it first you are winner.
My idea- postnuklear unit. After nuklear strike in nukebombed city postnuklear unit may appear. It's mutant unit, more powerful than modern Armor. It will give new life to nuklear wars and new strategy of modern wars.

[kring]

1/4 hit points doesn't mean that 3/4 are killed. IRL, such an instance would include: KIA, MIA, POW, injured to varying degrees. The same with equipment (tanks) the damage could be from mild to wild/destroyed.