MOD: Patch suggestion MOD

[lockstep]

Originally posted by player1
My version isn't bad for AI.
Yes, human player can attack with Musketmen, but maybe using Longbowmen or Knigth is better.
Also, only defese AI falg units do attack, but only if it's HEAVILY in their favor.

I didn't say that your version is bad for the AI. I just think that the AI will profit much more from a defender with a movement rate of 2, because this won't allow attacking Knights or Cavalry to retreat.

Yes, it's iteresting. But needs lots of playtesting and balaning.
And leaves a question: Why more modern units hhave not such feature?

I still think zero range bombardment isn't too unbalancing, but you have a point here.

As for lethal land for some of them, it's done mainly to represent those units as TACTICAL bobers. Since bombard rate of those units is still poor, you can only hope that you can take out 1hp Tanks or Infantry, which is not owerpowered in any way

My problem with lethal land bombardment is that this feature was deliberately left out by Firaxis when they designed Civ3, and - contrary to lethal sea bombardment (Pearl Harbor) - doesn't make the 're-creation' of a major historical battle possible.

I think that preq. of Industralization for ironclads, and their new cost of 100, is enough to give strategic choice.
Later age ironclads were not slower then Frigates, and that makes Firagtes way to fast for sailing ships.

Not sure about that one. Maybe the solution is to view Civ3's Ironclads as 'early' ones, move them back to Steam Power and make them slower than Frigates? (Hmm ... this is becoming a 'realism' vs. 'gameplay' argument.)

What to say?
I'm just conservative.
Since that's more like removing one wonder, and adding new Industrial wonder.

I understand your concern. In the beginning - when I browsed Monkspider's Balancer readme -, I was also very reluctant to the idea to move a wonder to another age. But on second thought, I had to admit that Longevity is absolutely useless on its current tech tree position. Not weak, or a second-rate wonder, but absolutely useless. If one wanted to change that, there were two possibilities:

1. Ignore Longevity's original effect and add something useful (as you did with +2 happy faces), or
2. Look out for a tech tree position where accelerated city growth becomes an interesting choice and where a 'Longevity' wonder wouldn't be plain ridiculous. Hmm .. yes, Medicine was indeed an option.

At this point, I decided to read the civilopedia entries. And I discovered that - contrary to the 'Cure for Cancer' entry, which clearly points to the Modern Age - the entry for Longevity was, IMO, adequate for both the Industrial and the Modern Age. And then, at last, I decided to adopt Monkspider's idea.

[player1]

Originally posted by lockstep
My problem with lethal land bombardment is that this feature was deliberately left out by Firaxis when they designed Civ3, and - contrary to lethal sea bombardment (Pearl Harbor) - doesn't make the 're-creation' of a major historical battle possible.

I doubt that when Civ3 designers were thinking about lethal bombards that they were ever considering for it to be selective to just several particular units.

It was more ON ALL vs OFF ALL desicion.

Strategicly speaking, lethal land for Jets is not unbalnced in any way, and gives an extra level of strategy.

And gives extra DEPTH to units which were useless before that.

Now you could try, bomb to hell with bombers, take out 1hp tanks on grassland with Jets, and use Land units for 1hp, but hevility foritifed units.

P.S.
Or just use Cruise missiles.

[alexman]

I think what we will do in the AU mod will be to adopt your 5-bombard strength for F-15 and St. Fighters. The problem is that now that we added bombard capability to Jet Fighters whereas before there was basically none, the F-15 becomes an even more lame UU.

The solution would be to add lethal land bombard to the F-15 but not the Jet Fighter. It would make the unit valuable again. It's a good compromise, I think. I'm not sure about lethal ground bombard for stealth fighters. If we add lethal to St. Fighters, we have to add it to St. Bombers, otherwise it will be better to build Fighters for bombing. Also, I'm afraid that if we add lethal bombard to too many air units, the cruise missile will become useless. (I know you increased its ROF, but it still gets destroyed after use).

As for zero-range bombard, you don't give it to modern units because modern units ALL have ranged attack. In modern warfare the range has increased. So what was ranged before, now is now not considered long range. The "ranged" unit is now artillery, which has this benefit in the game. OK, so it's not fair to the modern unit if an archer gets a free shot when a modern unit is attacking. But how often does a 4-bombard unit damage a 10+ defender anyway?

As for the ironclad, I think the battleship upgrade actually HELPS it. Nothing like an instant battleship navy while the Frigate fan has to build it all from scratch! It also makes more sense in terms of upgrades. The destroyer and the Frigate are both light fast ships. The ironclad and the battleship are both heavily armored ships. If the destroyer made the ironclad obsolete, then didn't the ironclad make the frigate obsolete before that? But they both exist at the same time because for gameplay it's nice to have options. It's like saying that the swordsman should upgrade to a knight. Who uses swordsmen in the middle ages? But they don't because there are two kinds of land units: the slow strong ones, and the fast ones. The Navy should be the same.

[player1]

Originally posted by alexman
The solution would be to add lethal land bombard to the F-15 but not the Jet Fighter. It would make the unit valuable again. It's a good compromise, I think. I'm not sure about lethal ground bombard for stealth fighters. If we add lethal to St. Fighters, we have to add it to St. Bombers, otherwise it will be better to build Fighters for bombing. Also, I'm afraid that if we add lethal bombard to too many air units, the cruise missile will become useless. (I know you increased its ROF, but it still gets destroyed after use).

Difference between 3 & 5 bom. str is significant.
It would usuly mean that you'll need a froup of 2 F-15 to destory 1hp unit, instead of force of 3 or 4 Jets.

As for Stl. Bom. vs Stl. Fig. it's on the border line.
If I add any kind lethal to stl. bombers, stl. fighter won't be used at all.

On the other hand Stl. Fighters are better for bombing less then 10defsense targets.

But, Stl Bomber also have THE range of 8.
And one Stl bomber has upkeep of 1gp.




P.S.
And lethal land to these units keeps thier usability on pangea maps.

[player1]

Just a though:

SInce two Bomb. Str. 5 ROF2 units vs one Bomb. Str. 8 ROF unit is on the borderline, what about decreasing price of Stl. Bomber to 200shields (instead of 240).

That could fix this.

[lockstep]

Decreasing the costs of the Stealth Bomber is a good idea.

About lethal land bombardment for some air units : You may be right after all.

About denying lethal land bombardment to Jet Fighters: Alexman's idea seems reasonable to me - after all, they also don't have the ability for precision strikes, while the F-15 does.

[=DrJambo=]

I am really interested to know how you are finding the tank to paratrooper AI choice in your mods?

Here's some findings from some tests i did recently...

Standard amphibious Marines are never preferred over tanks.

As soon as you add an operational range, they are preferred over tanks. This i have tested sufficiently.

When you keep the regular paratrooper available under Advanced Flight this still appears to be preferred, although only marginally, over the tank as an offensive unit. Now this is a problem. The standard para is not and should not be a preferable unit, but rather a specialised unit built under certain occasions only.

Now this is where i have had a brainstorm, albeit as yet untested.

Why not make the paratrooper a defensive unit?

It seems so obvious...! This way they would tend to remain in cities (nearer the airport for the airdrop) since at the moment the AI uses them as mobile ground attack units, rather than airdropping them behind enemy lines. When used by the AI in an offensive manner like spearmen or pikemen sometimes are, they'd be used for pillaging resoucres not assaulting cities. I'm mean lets face it, with stats like 6,8,1 they are never going to be effective offensively!?

In both your mods, you give the para 8,10,1 stats, perfect for a defensive unit?!

WHat do you reckon?

[player1]

DrJambo,

I'm not sure about defense flag.
Maybe it would make AI use them to much passively.
Or maybe just for defense of cities?
I don't know.

I (and Firaxis too) had no problem with thier offense flag, so I'll try not to mess with that too much.



Lockstep,
Idea of using lethal land for just F-15 and Stl. Fighter could be resonable, even from gamebalance point.

But I just think that other civs, exept Americans, should have some sort of tactical bomber (lethal land) before Stl. Flight.

And I think that 3 vs 5 bombard range could make enough good difference (it's somewere about 50% more efficiency) for Americans (no need to experiment with lethal land flag).


Anway, Stl Fighters NEED lethal land to make them distincive.
Loweing cost of Stl. Bombers would prevent their domination.
F-15 is supposed to be non-stealth Stl. Figher in it's stats.

And Jet fighter is much weaker then F-15.
I think that 50% better efficieny for F-15 is enough.
And it doesn't weaken a power of F-15 (I would call it Stl. Fighter before Stealth).


To alexman:
I doubt that anybody would pay more them 200gp for Ironclad upgrade to Battleship.
It' cheaper to disband Ironclad and build battships form scratch)

So such upgrade is realy not an benefit.

[lockstep]

Originally posted by player1
Idea of using lethal land for just F-15 and Stl. Fighter could be resonable, even from gamebalance point.

But I just think that other civs, exept Americans, should have some sort of tactical bomber (lethal land) before Stl. Flight.

And I think that 3 vs 5 bombard range could make enough good difference (it's somewere about 50% more efficiency) for Americans

You may be right here.

Anway, Stl Fighters NEED lethal land to make them distincive.

I agree. If lethal land bombardment is included, then Stealth Fighters should have this ability.

I doubt that anybody would pay more them 200gp for Ironclad upgrade to Battleship.
It' cheaper to disband Ironclad and build battships form scratch)

So such upgrade is realy not an benefit.

I disagree. Obviously, it can be advantageous to spend a lot of cash to upgrade units instead of spending shields to build new units from scratch. Otherwise, many expert players wouldn't do mass-upgrades of Warriors to Swordsmen for 40 gold each, although building Swordmen from scratch would only cost 30 shields (or 28 if you disband a warrior before).

[player1]

Originally posted by lockstep
I disagree. Obviously, it can be advantageous to spend a lot of cash to upgrade units instead of spending shields to build new units from scratch. Otherwise, many expert players wouldn't do mass-upgrades of Warriors to Swordsmen for 40 gold each, although building Swordmen from scratch would only cost 30 shields (or 28 if you disband a warrior before).

Ok.

Then what would your rather choose:
40gp to get upgrade to Destroyer or 200gp to get upgrade to Battships.

First option is better IMO, both for human players (if they made fleet of Ironclads) and AI (since they realy don't have money for 200gp upgrades).



P.S.
Of course my biggest probelm is with having Ironclads and Destoyers in same time in build queue
(especialy since I made Ironclads cost 100 shieds so, they are better in every way).


P.P.S.
You can say (by using same logic) that having both Firgates and Ironclads in same time is strange.
But, I made Ironclads cost 100 shields compared to Frigates.
And English need more time to play with Man-O-War.
They with cost of 60 shields are more cost effective in attack (but not in defense) against Ironcalds.

I think I've balanced that pretty well.

[lockstep]

Originally posted by player1
Then what would your rather choose:
40gp to get upgrade to Destroyer or 200gp to get upgrade to Battships.

First option is better IMO, both for human players (if they made fleet of Ironclads) and AI (since they realy don't have money for 200gp upgrades).

I'd have to choose between 40 gold + 200 shields (for building a battleship from scratch) and 200 gold + 120 shields (for building a destroyer from scratch). If I had gold in abundance, I might well choose the latter option. But you are right about the AI.

[player1]

Gold in abudance!

Not always possbile.

Especily if you have fleet of 10-15 Ironclads.
(like AI prefers)

[alexman]

I'm by no means saying that this proves anything, but look at what this guy did by upgrading ironclads to battleships...

Just thought it was relevant to the discussion.

[player1]

If just AI could to that...

[player1]

Version 1.33 is OUT!
Download from top of the thread.

Changes in ver 1.33

Some playtesting showed that range of 6 for Cruise Missiles was too much.
Especialy since you can easily move them near borders by using railroads.
So their range is lowered to 4 tiles.

Jet Fighters get bombard strenght of 3, to make them more distinctive from Fighters.
Still, not to much to make them unbalanced.

Since it would lead to less powerfull F-15 & Stealth Fighter, these units also get increased bombard strenght of 5.

In order to balance out increased Stl. Fighters bombard efficiency (compared to Stl. Bombers), Stl. Bombers get reduced cost of 200 shields (was 240).


Increased cost of Spaceship Components is back!
They will be aprox. 50% more expensive compared to original prices.
This is done, in order to prolong (and make more enjoyable) space race.

New costs for SS components are 250, 500 and 1000 shields (compared to old costs of 160, 320 and 640 shields).