AU mod: Amphibious Units

[vulture]

Originally posted by 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.

It would also allow the capturing of workers and catapults by any seaborne troops as well, which isn't necessarily a bad thing

There is the Dromon.

There goes my lack of Conquests experience again. Got the game finally - just waiting to finish of my current PtW conquest-fest before starting with the new stuff. I don't imagine the Dromon would be a huge problem: due to the lack of ancient era naval warfare in a big way, how useful really is it in practice? Or is it intended to be one of those mediocre UUs that make up for a good set of civ traits? FX: wanders off to do some quick researcj. Byzantines: seafaring, scientific. A reasonable, but not brilliant pairing. Does that mean the dromon could do with the boost of enabling the Byzantines to have effective ancient era amphibious attacks? Or would that make them overpowered?

[ducki]

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

This really depends on how many coastal cities you typically have AS WELL AS the ratio of your rear-guard to cities. I could easily switch from have a single stack of 4 knights centered on my 3-4 "important" coastal cities to having a stack of 2-3 knights (still centered) and one knight in each of those 3-4 cities and be able to shift defenses in whichever direction the AI leads.

I'm not sure the cost of 3-4 extra defenders is really going to put much of a dent in my normal strategy as the AI is likely to send galleys/caravels with a single attacker instead of 3 ships full of attackers with 1 garrison.

Not much of a change for my typical game. By the time the AI can launch a sizeable amphibious attack, we're probably late-industrial/modern and I've got zero-movement-cost defenses, meaning I can likely continue to skimp. Where the AI will have 2 units(at least) per city, I'll probably have more like 2 cities per unit. (Edit: Clarification: 2 (coastal) cities per (dedicated rear-guard) unit.

Doesn't seem like much of an AI advantage and it gives the human even more flexibility in gaining a beachhead without being counter-attacked.

Just my opinion. I'd be willing to test it, but it doesn't - superficially - seem to give much to the AI and it doesn't seem to alter my playstyle in any meaningful way. 3-6 extra offensive defenders in the middle ages sounds pretty minimal to me. YMMV based on difficulty level.

[alexman]

Originally posted by ducki
Not much of a change for my typical game.

It would be a huge change from my typical game.

But even the fact that you are forced to defend your cities with Knights instead of leaving them undefended would help the AI. The gazillion bombarding Frigates would then have a target that they can easily redline, instead of wandering around idle. Are you going to risk leaving your city defended by a single Knight, which when redlined can be easily defeated by an amphibious Musketman? If not, then the AI investment in Frigates has paid off by tying down more of your resources. If yes, then you risk the possibility of an amphibious assult, which even if nothing more than a raid, would hurt you more than it hurt the AI to build those Frigates.

[Tall Stranger]

Originally posted by alexman

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.

Well, it allows me the sneak attack, before the AI can reinforce a target city, which I've seen it do much more of in C3C. It also prevents the AI from attacking the stack I laid down (meaning I can send more attack units and fewer defensive ones), which I've also seen it do quite a bit more in C3C.

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

But you originally said Archers and Longbowmen. Longbowmen would have a 5 attack as an amphib unit, making it a highly effective attack unit. It would attack better and be more mobile than Knights against coastal targets.

If you're now talking about musketmen et. al., we run into the problem vulture pointed out earlier. The AI won't use them to attack, even amphibiously, without the offensive flag. But if you flag them offensive, it will likely screw with their ability to lauch traditional land offensives.

As I said before, it would also let the human do extensive raiding that the AI won't do. We will sail, fully loaded with archers, across one or two sea/ ocean tiles, as long as we end our turn on a coastal one. The AI won't.

I still think the impact on human defenses will be minimal, but maybe some testing would make sense. I'd venture to bet that humans come out way ahead.

[alexman]

The original proposal, which I now like again ( ), was to add the Amphibious ability to Musketmen, Musketeers, Riflemen, and Infantry and to add the AI offense flag to Musketmen. See the initial post.

The AI will rarely use Musketmen for ground attacks, as it estimates the odds for winning before attacking. But finally, a use for the attack factor of those defensive units!

[Tall Stranger]

Originally posted by alexman

It would be a huge change from my typical game.

It seems to me, then, that the question is "Who's game is more typical?"

If your's is, then maybe this change makes sense. If mine/ducki's is, then (with all due respect, no insult intended) it seems unfair to make a change to AU just to make a minority of players' games more challenging/ interesting/ fun/ etc.

All the more reason to playtest this before incorporating it into the AU mod.

[vulture]

We could always get ultra-revolutionary, create a new unit (which is shockingly similar to the warrior, with the same stats and unit graphics, but no upgrade), tied to an AI-only, non-tradeable tech that all AIs start with, but which has the ampibious ability. Assuming you can create techs that are assigned to AI only at the start of a game (as opposed to specific civs).

This would give the AI an amphib unit whose only real use would be taking undefended cities, or capturing coastal workers (or be nasty and give it the ensave ability...), which wouldn't be available to the player. This gives the AI an ability that the human doesn't have of course, but the only real effect is that the human has to keep more units defending coastal towns to defend against freak results (15% chance of taking out a lone spearman). With the unit having the same cost and effect as a normal warrior, it doesn't matter if the AI builds them and uses them as per normal - it doesn't hurt it any compared to stock.


Don't really know how do-able this is though.

[vulture]

We could always test some of these changes for the next AU course - the power of apmhibious assaults!

[alexman]

Good idea, but it's not possible in the existing editor unless a map is attached to the mod so you can distinguish the human player from the AI.

[vulture]

That b*ggers that up then, which I rather suspected might be the case.

Just for the record, I don't think that this would change my game style a great deal personally. I tend to keep my coastal cities garrisoned anyway, pre-amphibious units. I have the impression, whether valid or not, that undefended cities are seen by the AI as an invitation to attack, and keeping them all with at least one defender lowers the chance that the AI will just come at you hoping to snaffle a quick city while you are off guard.

[Arrian]

RE: typical gameplay...

I tend to garrison all coastal cities with a defensive unit. Playing on Monarch, I can afford this. I suspect it is one of the first things I'd ditch if I ever get serious about moving up in difficulty level, though.

The fact is that it's unecessary. I could just have a few good mobile attackers stationed at proper spots, and this would cover my coastal cities. But I maintain real garrisons because a) it's a holdover from CivII play; b) it seems right (probably because of a); and c) because I feel that undefended coastal cities is just too tempting for the poor AI - they just can't resist. And I really hate wars sparked by the lone AI archer landing. They piss me off.

-Arrian

[Risa]

Originally posted by alexman
The AI will rarely use Musketmen for ground attacks, as it estimates the odds for winning before attacking. But finally, a use for the attack factor of those defensive units!

But they will count musketmen as offensive force, thus reduce the number of their true attacking units.

[alexman]

True, although they will not produce many of them due to their low attack value of 2. Just like they don't build many Guerillas when they have rubber, even though they do build some of them.

[ducki]

Like I said above, I don't think this change would appreciably change the game in the way I think we want to - no deeper strategy, no "real" help to the AI, although it could be a lot of fun for the human.

That aside, though -
I dislike the idea of giving Muskets the special power of a UU so close to the UUs 15 minutes. Any way to attach Musket's amphibiousness to Caravels?

Rifles and Infantry is believable, but, IMO, too late to do the AI any good and just means the human can launch non-retaliatable city attacks without having to research the Marine's tech.


It may all come down to playstyle - if I really felt this would change my defense plans meaningfully or actually give the AI a shot at sneaking in and taking a beachhead, I'd be 100% behind it, but as it is, I think it would just encourage the AI to waste those shields.

It would, however, make the Coastal Fortress minorly more attractive, perhaps.

The more I think about it, the more important playstyle and difficulty level are when looking at this change. I'm willing to try it out, I'm just skeptical, that's all.

[alexman]

Originally posted by ducki
It would, however, make the Coastal Fortress minorly more attractive, perhaps.

Minorly? Perhaps?

With no amphibious units, why would you ever build a coastal fortress? Only when the city is also threatened by a ground attack.

If you defend your city, the AI hits the defending units, which immediately heal in the next turn. So why risk the destruction of a CF if the AI bombardment does you no harm? OTOH, if you don't defend your cities, the AI will never bombard them, so why build a CF?