Food for thought: Upgrading

[Random Passerby]

A very popular change for various mods seems to be completing upgrade paths. Now certainly this move has a lot of merit to it; for starters, it means no more longbowmen being built in 1900 A.D., even by cruddy little civs with no resources, and it does help encourage players to use the formerly dead-end units more often. Even I do tend to limit my use of swordsmen and longbowmen unless absolutely necessary, although I do know the value of powerful but highly expendable attackers; those knights are expensive!

However, while the former point--getting units to obsolesce and disappear from the build queue--is an unquestionably good move, I take issue with the latter. The problem, as I see it, is not that not enough units upgrade; it's that upgrades are too easy and too prevalent! Given enough money and a couple barracks, a podunk little civ with a quaint musket guard can turn into a strong, modernized superpower with infantry overnight; heck, I've done it myself more than once. Unfortunately solutions are limited; there aren't any settings to fine-tune upgrading abilities in the editor, so really the only thing that could be done is to define paths for upgrading (and thus obsoleting), but remove the upgrade ability for most or all units. This would have an undeniably serious impact on gameplay, but not a negative impact at all in my view. Many people complain about the lack of transitional units; why boldly emphasize the contrast with instantaneous, nation-wide upgrades the moment a new tech becomes available?

There is the issue of AI adaptability. Many people have noticed that the AI doesn't cope very well with the existing upgrade system; the AI definitely upgrades and upgrades often, at least with the new patch, but its money management techniques leave it scraping for money to upgrade a few units here, a few units there, compared to the human player who's often already saved up several thousand gold to instantaneously modernize their army (or simply keeps a large surplus for general use). The AI already seems to often have an overly large number of old-fashioned units lying around, and so one might be justifiably concerned about accentuating this; on the other hand, however, now the HUMAN player would likewise have large numbers of obsolete units in their army.



Has anyone ever tried a mod with this sort of change? Any comments?

[Ijuin]

Well, upgrades are needed in order for the AI to really replace its units at all. The AI rarely disbands its old units, so they would hang around eating up maintenence costs until they were upgraded or destroyed by another civ. Too many old units hanging around makes it impossible for the AI to create new, more powerful units because it cannot afford the upkeep on new ones.

One possibility might be to have upgraded units be put out of action for say, five turns or so after being upgraded. The units would be unable to move during that time, but would defend normally if the city they are in gets attacked. This represents the time needed to retrain the soldiers with their new weapons, and it slows down the ability to rush out with your new units the instant you get the tech for them.

As for the lack of upgradability for Swordsmen and Longbowmen, what I do is make them upgradable to Riflemen, which I think makes logical sense since Riflemen are the basic Industrial/Modern foot soldiers.

One thing that bothers me a bit is that there are really no units with an attack higher than 6 until Tanks become available (I am not counting Marines since it is possible to get Tanks before Marines). An attack of 6 against Infantry's defense of 10 is pathetic. However, it does make the game a bit historical--attack and defense are balanced until Infantry take the defensive advantage, which results in the bombard-and-infantry-charge trench warfare of WWI, and then Tanks come in and bring the advantage back to the offense until aircraft come around. Still, I would like to see a foot soldier unit with attack of 8 or so become available after Riflemen are available but before Infantry. Stats of 8.4.1 would seem appropriate to me.

[zulu9812]

What about an upgrade for Cavalry? That way they're still useful in the late industrial age. I use a Dragoon unit, with 8.4.3 stats and the Blitz ability.

[ALPHA WOLF 64]

I increased the costs of all the units so upgrading will cost a substanial amount. This will stop the podunk civs from becoming superpowrs overnight.

[Random Passerby]

Hrm... point. That could be especially problematic in the late ancient era; it seems the AI doesn't bother getting a budget surplus until late medieval era, but that period right around the transition to middle ages sees the AIs with plenty of units already and lots of upgrades coming soon. I really wish I knew what the heck the AI does with all its money, because it never makes any sense just how poor all the AI civs are. Maybe it would help to *cue ominous crash of thunder* increase the AI trade rate; from Soren's explanation of how that setting works, the current settings are pretty low compared to my own practices.

As to simply increasing costs: I have no objection to increasing production costs--it's obscene how quickly you can build some of those modern units--but I just don't like the whole money = instant power transfer anyways. I've had situations where an AI civ landed on some remote island where I only had spearmen or pikeman and declared war, so I finally get around to upgrading the defenders there and suddenly face the AI's cavalry or tanks with mech infantry. That almost feels like cheating to me. And considering some of the stockpiles I've gotten--you could still easily afford some staggering upgrade might even as a second-rate world power unless you had, say, mech infantry outcosting most wonders (hrm......). Possibly even then, since chances are you'd be increasing costs at least exponentially, and if it was a smooth increase across the board then there'd still hardly be any impact.

I do think I'll have to try a game with this... hmm...

(P.S. Somewhat off-topic, but as for the late industrial war--that's my favorite time to fight! Just wish the AI would use artillery more often; once flight comes into the picture, they do start using bombers tolerably well...)

[Ijuin]

As for what the AI does with its money, it uses it to fund an oversized army--the AI civs tend to keep around as many units as they can afford to maintain according to the strategy that more is better.

A possible compromise on the problem of suddenly upgrading Spearmen to Infantry or the like would be to make it so that you cannot skip an upgrade step. Instead of being able to directly upgrade to a high level unit, you must upgrade it one step at a time, spending one turn and the full amount in cash for each step. For example, a Spearman must be upgraded first to Pikeman, then to Musketman, then to Rifleman, then to Infantry, then finally to Mech. Infantry (takes five upgrade steps, so it will take five turns AND about twice as much money as a straight Spearman-->Mech. Infantry upgrade would, AND you have to have the resources to construct ALL of the intermediate units--no stopping your imports of Iron and Saltpeter just because you can now build Riflemen--you'll still need the resources).

And if you add this to my earlier idea about how a unit loses its movement for the next four turns to retrain after upgrade, then it will take up to nine turns (five for the actual upgrading, then it loses four turns to train) to get from Spearmen to Mech. Infantry.

[Random Passerby]

Yes, but I'm mostly sticking to things that can be done with the editor.

After a little fiddling, it turns out that the AI's handling of this change is a problem... but not one of being overly obsolete. Giving myself godlike powers and an intelligence agency in 4000 B.C., I noticed that the AIs were doing a reasonably good job of keeping their armies modern, phasing out older units to make room for newer ones, seemingly even when they had money to spare. Then around Gunpowder, I started noticing that they were doing a little too well... so as an experiment I lent 100,000 gold (told you I had godlike powers) to Japan and had my spy steal his troop plans, and sure enough, I was treated to a view of twenty-some pikemen upgrading to muskets, two or three in a city at a time. Apparently the AI ignores whether or not the upgrade ability is checked; it only looks to see if there's a unit to upgrade to and does so. I think the shift-U command might also get around the lack of an upgrade button.

Whether or not this is actually a problem is debatable; I view it as a reasonably tolerable AI cheat, since otherwise the AI would have major problems keeping its army modern.