Unit Strengths by Era

[Jaybe]

Gen.Dragolen,
Isn't it amazing how runs of luck will make us think that certain units are [better/worse] than their stats indicate!

It happens to me, too. Generally only lasts for a few hundred years of a particular game, then next game it's totally different.

[Theseus]

Back OT:

This may be a little heretical, but of the regular units, I think that the Swordsman might be unbalanced.

Consider that with ONE exception, the Swordsman will have a 50% advantage over defenders for a looooong time, at the most critical juncture of the game.

Think of the other typical attackers:

Horsemen: Generally, no point advantage.

Knight-level: A 100% advantage against Spearmen, true, but Feudalism is a prerequisite for Chivalry, and thus all but weakling AI civs should have upgraded. Only 33% on Pikemen, and 0% on Muskets.

Cavs: 50% on Muskets, but have you noticed how much the AI now values Nationalism? 0% against Rifles, and negative 40% on Infantry, which is a common match-up.

Tank-level: 60% on Infantry, good, but remember that at this point defense bonuses from city size will be much more of an issue. Negative 11% on MI. And, often, the game has already been won at this point.

MA: 33% on MI.
_____________________

In the 1337 game, hordes of Legions were simply unstoppable, even by the Greeks.

I would add that China, being militaristic and industrious, makes the Sword threat even worse, with cheap barracks, the fast development of a military road network, and the coup de grace of Riders. Persia, being non-militaristic and industrious, but with the Immortal, is almost as bad.

Thus far, we as a group have still been finding our way towards what early warfare can really do... as I've also thought about the rushing strats that have evidently become dominant in Civ2-MP, I have come to the conclusion that insane Sword rushing in SP will win just about any Large or smaller game (obviously not alone, but setting the stage for a later Knight / Cav / Tank win).

Boring, but true... and unbalanced.

[Gen.Dragolen]

Swordsmen unbalanced ?

Theseus,

I tend to agree that the swordsman is the most unbalanced unit in the game.

It's advantage over the common units in the ancient age makes the rush to get Iron Working, followed by upgrades to the hordes of Warriors a boring, and predictible pattern for us. Can you imagine what an MP game will be like: it gets down to build 4 cities, get to Ironworking and then send your 8-12 swordmen after your immediate neighbour. You could use an archer rush if you felt like betting against the research times.

This overpowering effect was why I lowered the swordsman's attacking strength to 2 in the mod I was working on. It was still an effective unit, but it made combat more costly. My goal was to make the need for catapults apparent, but for them to do any good, you need at least 8 to damage 1 unit in a turn. What I will need to do is figure out if there is any way to improve their odds of hitting. I mean how hard is it to hit a nice big, stationary stone wall ? This means seige warfare, at which militaries like the Romans and Chinese were masters. Most of the medieval seige engines were imported by the Mongols from the Chinese.

Sun Tzu's contemporaries admonished leaders that attacking a fortified city would cost half your troops. Better to negotiate or use subterfuge. So let us use catapults as a siege engine, and make some rule changes for laying siege to a city. If you can surround it, then it starts to starve, and the AI Civ can either break the siege, negoitate or risk the city's governor surrendering. That at least would make the possibilites of a culture flip seem more like a revolt in a capture city, and not some lame statistical action. (As nice as getting a weakened town for nothing is) The AI will already negotiate for trade and all, so the coding to make it negotiate to break a seige shouldn't be that hard to do.

I can see it now: My troops are approaching a city. I surround it. The siege engines start pounding. An emissary contacts you: "What would it take for you to go away ?"

Cha-CHING!$!$

Makes a nice alternative to sulking when an AI Civ refuses to trade with you.

Nice tangent to the original theme, huh? In any case, from my test games with 2/2/1 swordsmen, they suffered more casualties, but you could still take an unfortified town from spearmen. I tried against a walled town and it would still fall, but again, your casualties increase. It makes building walls a worthwhile endevour for the AI too, as I have never seen a AI City with Walls.

D.

[Jaybe]

Originally posted by Theseus
...
This may be a little heretical, but of the regular units, I think that the Swordsman might be unbalanced.
...

At least they are a dead-end, upgrade wise. Makes it less likely to produce them in lare numbers unless you already have a target and a proper timetable for their use.

[King of Rasslin]

They are not unbalanced! They cannot upgrade to anything. Horsemen can. And swordsmen are slow, very slow. They cannot retreat. They are good for very rough maps, but normally they aren't very good as it is. Catapults do need to be strengthened, however.

[Theseus]

I guess I'm looking at it from another angle... not the unit in and of itself, but considering the context in the flow of the game.

A dedicated Sword strategy is quite simply unopposable by any AI civ within reach, including via galley, from IW up to Gunpowder. Assuming that the player actually does so (and that we're talking about general conditions, which probably means somewhere between 1/4 and 1/2 of all AI civs being attacked), the game is fundamentally over.

I guess my point is, that a single unit type from the Ancient era has that much power makes it unbalanced.

Let me put it this way, 'cause I don;t think any of us have ever looked at the sharp end of the Sword... at higher barb levels, you'll get 16+ reg Horsemen coming at you as a horde. I find that generally manageable... no way I could handle that many Swords, without specifically preparing for it. And you know the AI does not prepare for us to do it.

[King of Rasslin]

Smashing the AI with swordsmen is just as easy as with horsemen, only slower. I don't see any imbalance because the swordsmen are in the open longer and they can see the invasion coming from a mile away. Horsemen can take a city or two before the AI knows what hits them. Riders are incredible for this purpose.

[hr_oskar]

Swordsmen are good, dependable units and most of us who play Emperor and Deity are very good at using them. But I wouldn't call them unbalancing, given their limited mobility.

The reason we're so successful with the Swordsmen is IMO that the AI does a bad job at exploiting their weaknesses. Swordsmen should be brought down in the field, using more mobile units (e.g. Horsemen).

This is what human players will do (the smart ones, that is), and that's why I think they won't be too dominating in MP.

[hr_oskar]

Originally posted by joseph1944


The F-117 is an Ground Attack Fighter, not for Air to Air.
The new F-22 will be Air to Air.

I must join in criticism of the Stealth Fighter unit. I have a hard time understanding its strategic role. It's the #1 unit I would remove from the game to make room for something more interesting.

Not sure what to suggest to improve this unit. The current air combat system is an improvement on Civ2 I think, but still somehow unsatisfactory. Why no dog-fights for example? Why can't we escort our bombers? And why only SAM batteries? - Air defence was developed much earlier than that.

[Gen.Dragolen]

Theseus has hit it exactly: what strategic challenge is it if you know each turn what you have to do to build swordsmen and nothing else ?

Part of the problem is that the combat model makes it the only option. With no way to bombard a city to destroy their walls and other infrastucture and maybe do a little damage to the units hiding in the city, they are all that is left.

All artillery units need to be made a little more realistic in their effect: ancient units will do more damage to buildings than to people, while modern artillery will do more damage to people.

That assumes they actually hit anything: catapults only hit 1 in 8 shots on average, and the damage they inflict is only1 hp.

When I looked at the bombardment settings in the editor, it confirmed that they are useless as siege weapons. The only use I have for artillery at Monarch and above is to either clear terrain improvments or defend. At least on defense, I know they will do 1 hp of damage to the first attacker.

Bombers are even more useless as they never hit anything either. Last time I checked, carpet bombing will ruin anyone's day... and should do the most damage of anything. You do remember pictures of cities in Europe during WWII and of the jungles in Vietnamn where the predominent terrain feature was the crater...

When I have the time, I think I'm going to have to learn to make animated gifs for a WWII vintage flak battery. That will have to be accomplanied by a mobile AAA ground unit. Actually it will simpler just to make it an improvement...

This is all kind of silly since the game is supposed to have units representing divisions, and they have made some less than balanced comprimises in units designs.


D.

[hr_oskar]

Gen. Dragolen: I disagree about the usefulness of Artillery - it's critical IMO to soften up that entrenched Infantry; a healthy percentage of Artillery in your army will make the warfare more cost-effective, by reducing casualties.

I agree however about the need for some mechanism to simulate the difference between primitive and advanced artillery. Catapults and early cannons were only good for siege - field artillery only become really effective in the late industrial age, most notably in WWI.

As it is, the Civ3 catapult is more useful as a field weapon than a siege weapon - it has such a hard time cracking the high defence of an entrenched spearman.

I think for a better simulation of early siege warfare we would need more defensive improvements, and the possibility of neutralizing them.

Also why not cause bombardment to unfortify units? Either as a bonus effect, or as the first thing to happen before hp are lost, and possibly to have this disentrenchment easier than causing actual hp loss. I think if catapults only disentrenched (but more easily), and never caused hp damage, they would be more realistic and useful at the same time.

Must say though, Civ3 is a revolution in these matters when compared to Civ2, which didn't even have bombardment.

[TacticalGrace]

It certainly is an improvement over siv2 where cannon alone could capture a city. but the sadest thing is that artillery was handled better in CTP where it was an invaluable part of any army because it would sit at the back and bombard constantly throughout the battle.

The only thing they got right is the ability to capture unattended artillery.

[Gen.Dragolen]

hr_oskar,

I have tried using Radar Artillery on the offensive and it is even worse for doing damage than standard Artillery.

One of the problems is that the RA should have a movement of 2 or 3 since then are supposed to be a mobile unit, where as the older towed artillery should move the same as an Infantry division. The other problem is effectiveness. Why use a unit that doesn't do anything on the offensive for offensive operations?

A catapult may be able to soften up a fortified spearman, but why use a catapult that needs an escort ? Not to mention that for the most part, heavy units could only be moved on roads, or they were built on site. What you saw at the start of "Gladiator" was a Hollywood version: catapults were used from fortresses or as seige engines only. And in ancient times, the primary way of defeating a city's walls was to build a ramp up to the top of them. Like at Masada for example.

Anyway, with a catapult having an attack strength of 4 firing on a fortified spearman with a defensive strength of in a non-walled size 1 city has a 4 in 7 chance of hitting when attacking according to the combat model. The actual rate is 1 in 8, and that is after recording a hundred attacks over the course of the last 6 months. And that one hit will do 1 hp to a unit or possibly destroy a building (which have a defensive strength of 8).

I'm not saying they need to make it like Stronghold, but they need to rethink how siege warfare is supposed to work if we are to end the imbalance from swordsmen. This means making walls the primary target of catapults and give the walls hit points. A couple of turns bombardment and they will fall. This would make the AI Civ (or at least the city's governor) want to negotiate or you can put the torch the city and put the people to the sword.

TacticalGrace,

I do miss the artillery as it was used in CTPII. For CivIII I would have made it like the other units, but with minimal defensive strength. I hate it when they attack down to their last hp , destroying all the other units, but not the artillery. The artillery should be able to fight back, a Final Protective Fire for each unit in the stack, and should only be captured part of the time: any good artillery man is going to spike his guns if they are about to be captured...

Like I said: these units are good on the defensive but that's all. Even then they are not as useful as the should be. So if we want a game where one unit can't dominate everything like the swordsmen do we need to improve the utility of the support units.

D.

[TacticalGrace]

Originally posted by Gen.Dragolen
I do miss the artillery as it was used in CTPII. For CivIII I would have made it like the other units, but with minimal defensive strength. I hate it when they attack down to their last hp , destroying all the other units, but not the artillery. The artillery should be able to fight back, a Final Protective Fire for each unit in the stack, and should only be captured part of the time: any good artillery man is going to spike his guns if they are about to be captured...

D.

Yes, I was going to say something about spiking the guns. This is simulated in a way in Civ. You can disband a unit if you think it's going to be captured but this will never happen really unless you are moving artillery around without an escort or you inadvertantly come across a big stack of enemy units. This just illustrates that Civ isn't a war game. It just doesn't have the granularity to worry about these kinds of details. One turn is afterall by default at least one year.

The CTP approach is the best one and really would add a whole extra dimension to the game. It would also give purpose to all the units that don't quite make sense: armies would be more useful and realistic; archers would start behaving like they do in real life rather than some sort of odd assualt unit; the artillery units would be useful; air support could be integrated into the battle in a more realistic manner.

The only problem with CTP combat system was that the AI couldn't handle it which utterly took tahe fun out of it.

[vmxa1]

Maybe this is not the proper place for this, but since the129f the transport is an awe inspiring unit. I had one take down a battleship. Is the civped out of date or is the number it gives for transports correct? It says it is weak and has an attack of 1. I had to take to running arties over to bombard them before attacking them. They opened up with machine gun fire?