AU mod: Amphibious Units

[alexman]

The problem:

As mentioned in the Naval Bombardment thread, the C3C AI prefers to bombard cities instead of resources, even when it doesn’t follow up with ground or amphibious attacks. The units bombarded by the AI heal in the next turn, often resulting in no damage suffered by the bombarded civilization. On the other hand, if you leave your cities undefended, the AI will not bombard them, which encourages the counter-intuitive strategy of leaving coastal cities undefended until Marines (or Berserks) are available. The AI, of course, does not follow this strategy.

Possible Solution:

Add the Amphibious ability to Musketmen, Musketeers, Riflemen, and Infantry. Add the AI offense flag to Musketmen and Musketeers. Even units with a low attack are enough to discourage players from leaving cities undefended or lightly defended. Remember, units have their attack factor doubled in amphibious assaults.

The benefits of this solution are numerous:

• Players get another option for invading, which encourages combined arms. Naval Power in the Middle and early Industrial Ages becomes more important.
• The AI doesn’t waste resources by needlessly bombarding cities.
• Coastal Fortresses become more useful, as players now have a reason to protect their units in cities from naval bombardment.
• Unlike the human player, the AI always defends its coastal cities, so it would not have to divert resources to deal with the new amphibious threat.
• One-tile islands are no longer invulnerable until Marines.

On the downside, this is quite a big change for the AU mod, and should be made only if the enhanced element of strategy and better AI performance are worth it. I think it’s worth it. What do you think?

[Kuciwalker]

I'd rather Longbowmen (and maybe Archers) get this, seeing as the amphibious Berzerk replaces them.

Btw, don't Infantry have the same attack as Marines? Giving them amphib could make Marines worthless (as Marines also cost more).

EDIT: n/m about the infantry

[alexman]

Longbowmen would attack with an Amphibious strength of 8. No other unit is that strong in the Middle Ages, so that would encourage strange tactics from having better odds of taking a city with an ampibious assault than with a ground attack. On the other hand, Musketmen would attack with an amphibious attack of 4.

Infantry has an attack factor of 6 (8 in the AU mod). Marines have an attack factor of 12.

[pauli]

while i wouldn't want realism to outweigh gameplay concerns, i'm rather dubious about musketmen splashing about at low tide.

why would longbowmen and musketmen have doubled attack values from the sea?

i't tend to give the ability to warriors, swordsmen, and med inf, rather than muskets.

[Tall Stranger]

I hate to be negative, but I can't say I'm real excited by this idea. Couple of reasons:

1. In general, anything which increases attack options within the game will, almost certainly, strengthen the player rather than the AI.

2. The AI is terrible at using transports, etc. for conventional warfare. How many times have you seen two galleons show up and drop off a total of 3 units? Happens to me all the time. Even in C3C (in which I think the AI is better at stacking units), I'd be quite surprised if makes full use of the capability this change would provide it.

3. I don't know about everyone else, but I always keep a couple of decent units to safeguard key rear-area cities. (several Horsies/ Knights, some defensive units), just in case the AI decides to land a couple units next to my cities. Since the AI is terrible about masking where it's heading, it would be a trivial process to move a bunch of units around, causing the AI to change its "target city" constantly. Net result: AI builds a bunch of units that never factor into the battle.

4. Making amphib assault more common cheapens it and makes cool units like Berzerks, well, less cool. (OK, not a great reason! )

You're right, as it is now, naval bombardment is useless for the AI. But to address the problem, I would much rather see naval bombardment changed back, so that an AI could inflict economic damage by bombarding. In my view, your "cure" for this problem is worse than the "disease."

[Kuciwalker]

Originally posted by alexman
Longbowmen would attack with an Amphibious strength of 8. No other unit is that strong in the Middle Ages, so that would encourage strange tactics from having better odds of taking a city with an ampibious assault than with a ground attack. On the other hand, Musketmen would attack with an amphibious attack of 4.

Infantry has an attack factor of 6 (8 in the AU mod). Marines have an attack factor of 12.

Huh? Is attack strength doubled for amphibious attacks?

[lockstep]

Originally posted by alexman
Longbowmen would attack with an Amphibious strength of 8.

You're sure about that one? This would mean that Berzerks attack with an amphibious strength of 12 at the moment!

[Kuciwalker]

Theseus would like that

[ZargonX]

I was under the impression that amphib. attack simply eliminated all [i]defensive[/b] bonuses. Do I need to stand corrected?

[alexman]

Originally posted by lockstep

You're sure about that one? This would mean that Berzerks attack with an amphibious strength of 12 at the moment!

Sorry, it was among the changes that were mentioned before C3C was released, so I assumed it was true.

However, I just tested it and it's not true after all. So forget giving Musketmen an offensive ability! Next idea!

[alexman]

OK, the amphibious bonus is actually 25% (confirmed by Firaxis).

I'm starting to like the idea of giving the amphibious ability to archer-type units. Archers and Longbowmen won't become obsolete with Iron.

Originally posted by Tall Stranger
1. In general, anything which increases attack options within the game will, almost certainly, strengthen the player rather than the AI.

In principle, I agree. However, this is a special case that helps the AI. As I mentioned above, the AI defends its coastal cities anyway. Humans usually defend several coastal cities at once by keeping a mobile force ready to attack after a landing has happened. With early amphibious units, the human has to spend more resources on defense, but the AI doesn't. Also, the idea is not to make amphibious landings a prefered option of attack, but to use the threat of an invasion against empty cities as an incentive to make the human defend his cities. This is why I proposed to give the amphibious ability to units with low attack value.

2. The AI is terrible at using transports, etc. for conventional warfare.

Again, just the threat of an amphibious invasion from the AI will serve its purpose to strengthen the AI and to force a more balanced coastal defense from the human. The AI won't carry out a full blown invasion; it never does. It will be more like a raid, and I'm sure the AI will be very happy to raize one of your coastal cities.

3. I don't know about everyone else, but I always keep a couple of decent units to safeguard key rear-area cities. (several Horsies/ Knights, some defensive units), just in case the AI decides to land a couple units next to my cities.

Your defense will still have to change to prevent the AI from landing inside your cities though, won't it?

Since the AI is terrible about masking where it's heading, it would be a trivial process to move a bunch of units around, causing the AI to change its "target city" constantly. Net result: AI builds a bunch of units that never factor into the battle.

This happens anyway. The AI builds some units and sends them off on transports. I don't imagine the AI will build any more if the units have the amphibious capability. The difference is that amphibious units can catch the human off-guard much more easily, as it can attack the city one turn sooner.

[vulture]

Would it not make more sense to give amphibious attack to defensive units only, if anything. That way, it's not really an amphibious attack, since 1 attack (spearmen, pikes) or 2 (muskets, musketeers) aren't going to hurt anything of their era (except by taking much heavier casualties than what they are attacking), but will be able to walk in off the boat and take control of an undefended town.

Archers or longbows would be a bad idea for this IMHO - they are already reasonable attackers, and would be even better as amphibious units - it would make amphibious assaults for the humans viable throught the ancient and medieval eras, and wouldn't be well used by the AI. Adding it to defensive units woulnd't be used by the AI much either - but would enable the AI to walk in to undefended towns, which seems to be the point.

Two problems with this:

One, the defensive units are flagged as - er - defensive, so even with amphibious ability, the AI isn't going to put them in a boat and sail off to do some raiding. We'd have to find a way to encourage the AI to build some offensive spears and pikes, which can be done with the 'offense' flag in the editor, but might hurt the AI more than it helps by encouraging it to build offensive spearmen rather than horsemen, archers or swordsmen. Has anyone tested the effects of this?

Two, human players could possibly still parley some kind of value out of this in the middle ages. The lack of an ancient bombard ship means that the ancient era isn't too heavily damaged - you'd need quite a few ships and quite a lot of spearmen to take down a town defended by 2 spears and an archer (which is what you'd probably be facing by the time you could assemble an invasion force). But particularly in the world of MP, these kinds of extreme tactics can be done. What remains to be seen is whether it would be viable, or whether investing all those shields in a pile of swordsmen (with much better survivability) would be a much superior route (in which case game-play isn't much altered aside from the need to defend coastal towns for humans). Once frigates appear in the middle ages (okay, late middle ages), amassing enough of them to redline all defenders (particularly with the stock bombard rules in conquests, damaging units first with no coastal fortress) is not too hard, and gives your naval musket attack force pretty good survival chances. Consider, veteran musket (4 hp, 2.5 naval attack) vs veteran musket (1 hp, 8 defense more or less), attacker wins 66.3% of the time. Versus a redlined riflemen (12 defense, for illustrative purposes) it is still a 53.1% chance in favour of the attacker. A good stack of frigates plus a galleon of muskets could probably deal with a city defended by muskets or rifles with surprising ease. The human player who was prepared to commit to a lot of ships would have a good window of opportunity from magnetism through to infantry.

[Tall Stranger]

Originally posted by alexman
In principle, I agree. However, this is a special case that helps the AI. As I mentioned above, the AI defends its coastal cities anyway. Humans usually defend several coastal cities at once by keeping a mobile force ready to attack after a landing has happened. With early amphibious units, the human has to spend more resources on defense, but the AI doesn't.

It better, because the human is going to use this to an absurd advantage. I would seriously consider, in my war planning, building 4-5 galleys, loading them up with a couple of spears and the rest archers, float them 3 spaces from their capital or large coastal city and launch an amphib attack on the first turn of the war. Combine that with a conventional land invasion, and the AI is toast.

Also, consider how much easier it will be to raid a more civ not on your continent. I would have little hesitation about declaring on a distant, rising power. Position some boats off their shore, declare, raze 2-3 cities, and sue for peace. Not only will you likely get something for it, but you can utterly trash their economy. Basically, any civ will have the ability to do what, right now, only Berzerks can. Not nearly as well as Berzerks, but still lethal in the hands of a human.

Also, the idea is not to make amphibious landings a prefered option of attack, but to use the threat of an invasion against empty cities as an incentive to make the human defend his cities. This is why I proposed to give the amphibious ability to units with low attack value.

But it WILL be the preferred option of attack. As you've pointed out, you get a 25% attack bonus. BUT you also get a movement of at least 3 through enemy territory. Why bother attack via land with single move units? I'd just bounce from coastal city to coastal city.

Your defense will still have to change to prevent the AI from landing inside your cities though, won't it?

Only slightly. I'd reduce the number of mobile units in the rear, slightly increase the number of defenders, and position some of the defenders in such a way that, once I figure out which city the AI is headed for, I can rapidly reinforce it. Slight increase in my costs, a little more work for me, but well worth the increased attack options I have.

If I thought the AI was even marginally capable of an effective amphib assault (i.e. if it built a bunch of galleys, filled them with archers and hit me), I'd fully support this. But, as we all know, the AI is too predictable in how it acts to make its amphib assault a meaningful threat.

[Arrian]

I wish there was a way of giving ALL units the amphibious ability, but having all but the special amphib troops (Berserks, Marines) suffer a huge penalty when attacking amphibiously. That would allow any unit to grab an undefended town, but taking a defended town would be extremely bloodly w/o real amphib units.

The lack of an ancient bombard ship means that the ancient era isn't too heavily damaged

There is the Dromon.

-Arrian

[alexman]

Originally posted by Tall Stranger

I would seriously consider, in my war planning, building 4-5 galleys, loading them up with a couple of spears and the rest archers, float them 3 spaces from their capital or large coastal city and launch an amphib attack on the first turn of the war. Combine that with a conventional land invasion, and the AI is toast.

And how is this different than what you can do now? Just load Swordsmen and Spears and attack the turn after you land. The losses from attacking with low-attack amphibious units will likely be offset by the losses from the AI attack after you land.

Why bother attack via land with single move units?

Because the idea is to give the amphibious property to units with a relatively low attack strength.