AU Mod: Modern Armor

[alexman]

The problem

Modern Armor is the best ground unit in the game. Its high attack and defense encourage players to follow the one-dimensional strategy of building exclusively Modern Armor as their ground units. You get almost the same defensive value as Mechanized Infantry, but with awesome attack capabilities.

Consider a veteran Modern Armor attacking a fortified veteran Mechanized Infantry on plains. The odds are about 50-50. Now consider the odds of the same Modern Armor attacking another Modern Armor unit. The odds are just 55-45 in favor of the attacker.

The AI always builds plenty of defenders, which means that it can't take full advantage of this great unit by building more of them at the expense of mechanized Infantry.

Possible Solution

Decrease the defensive value of Modern Armor.

This would encourage combined arms in the Modern Age, and it would also help the AI, who escorts his Modern Armor with Mechanized Infantry whenever possible.

But what is the proper value to give Modern Armor for defense? The stock value is 16. Mechanized Infantry has a value of 18. In the PTW version of this mod, we selected 14. Tanks have a defense equal to half their attack, so if we follow that same proportion for MA, it would mean a value of 12.

So do you agree that Modern Armor is too strong defensively? Do you have other ideas that would encourage combined arms and help the AI? What value do you think is appropriate for their defense?

[Stuie]

12.

[vmxa1]

Not to get off topic or even address this one either, but I just wonder if all of the tweaks put together are going to make the game unrecoqnizable?

[alexman]

Don't worry, it's actually one of the goals of the mod for that not to happen. This particular change was in the PTW version too, BTW.

Anyway, back on topic...

[ducki]

both on and off-topic:
I realize I was one of the few to support this idea, but I think it would be worthwhile to have the panel look at the readme for the last PtW mod and have a line-item vote on each one on whether to summarily transfer it to AU:C3C or not.
A No vote wouldn't mean it doesn't belong, but that it needs discussing. I think we could get a pretty good, ready to go version of the mod in a day with that approach, and it could be done "offline" with one person taking all the results and going with approximately a 2/3-required vote to transfer summarily.

That way items like this that are likely to just be barely discussed and whisked into the mod can skip the "barely" discussed stage. This would be a one-time only run through of previous changes.

I think the panel has enough knowledge to do this and I think the rest of the AU community have enough faith in the panel as a whole that anything that gets > 2/3 panel support won't likely be a goof.

And as always, everything in the mod is always removable should it prove to be "bad" due to unforseen circumstances.

Like many carryovers, I think this one is a good idea, but again, would need to see it in action to really know.

[pauli]

well, this one probably needs discussion - i don't believe that tow infantry were in ptw, and they do have a direct role against modern armor.

[nbarclay]

Alexman, your premise seems to be that with things as they are, the choice of accompanying MAs with defenders is uninteresting for human players. I disagree, because in most of my games, my MAs are in fact accompanied by one or more MechInfs unless they need to move faster than MechInfs can keep up. It's not even all that rare for me to build additional MechInfs after I can build MAs if I have cities that can build MechInfs faster.

Granted, the defensive difference between MAs and MechInfs is small, but it does exist. Further, MechInfs are a little bit cheaper, so if I'm going to risk losing something, why not risk a cheaper unit? And of course there are all those infantry left over from before I could build tanks that I can upgrade to MechInfs and use to defend my attackers.

I'm not actually against reducing the defensive value of MAs a little, but I think the alleged problem is overstated.

Nathan

[Risa]

I've no idea about this issue.

I've changed the cost of MA to 140 shields in my mod, but I don't have many chance to test it. Games that last to middle modern age are not often.

[Dominae]

I agree with alexman that Modern Armor do not encourage combined arms strategy: whenever I get to use them, all my cities build nothing else for the rest of the game.

This is, incidentally, the same problem as with Cavalry; a very mobile, high Attack unit that the AI does not beeline to. For this reason, I doubt a reduced Defense value will do very much. But I have no issues about trying it out.


Dominae

[ZargonX]

I say we give it a whirl, see how it functions with TOW infantry in the game, and go from there.

[Theseus]

MAs' defense value is SO MUCH NOT THE POINT.

What can be done to help AI civs defend against a massive human player AI attack?

[lockstep]

As it already was included in the PtW version of the AU mod, I support a MA defense value of 14.

[ducki]

What can be done to help AI civs defend against a massive human player AI attack?

Lower MA attack value?
Significant zero-range bombard for Infantry/MechInf?
Higher Inf-MechInf defense value?

[nbarclay]

Trying to improve infantry, or even MechInfs, in an attempt to make MAs less powerful would result in nasty side effects. Infantry are often attacked by other units before MAs come on the scene, and it's not rare for AI tanks to go up against human MechInfs. (Human tanks against AI MechInfs are rarer, but by no means unheard of.) Thus, boosting Infantry and MechInfs would affect other balances besides just those involving MAs.

Nathan

[Theseus]

OK, d14 is better than nothing then.