AU mod: The Jaguar Warrior

[nbarclay]

Originally posted by alexman
A despotic GA is a huge advantage if you are going to rush your neighbor. You don't even need to use the Jaguars, you can use any other unit.

That's a very big if, especially when the UU in question offers no real combat advantage to help in the war (as is the case for the JW under the default C3C rules).

Further, Babylon, Carthage, Sumeria, and Greece all have UUs that are available researching no more than one tech and without needing resources. Every one of those UUs offers a significant combat advantage over the unit it replaces in spite of the fact that you seem to consider a despotic GA all by itself a "huge advantage." The precedents of other civs do not bear out the idea that a despotic GA should be considered such an enormous benefit that a UU that can trigger one does not need to offer any other military advantages.

[Dominae]

Unfortunately this is turning into a despotic GA debate...

The fact of the matter is, whether it fits your playstyle or not, a desptoic GA does offer distinct and important advantages. This adds variety to the game. In those games where ultra-early warfare is sought after or necessary, you can bet that the early GA will not go unnoticed (in a positive way). Just because some of us may not like ultra-early warfare does not mean the AU mod needs to "balance" Ancient era uniques. Games rarely last to the late Industrial era, so should we improve Panzers to compensate?

The reason it's imporant to balance civs is that each civ should be attractive to play in some non-trivial circumstances, given all the different playstyles (Builer, Warmonger...) and game types (early conquest, psychotic Wonder-building, Culture victory, etc.) out there. Those civs which are really not good at anything (like the English in Play the World) or are eclipsed by a similar but more powerful counterpart (the Incans by the Aztecs in stock C3C) require special attention.

alexman makes a pretty good case that the Aztecs do not really need special attention. They've got the best trait (Agricultural), a UU that more or less copies another trait entirely (Expansionist), and have great synergy between their ultra-early aggressive UU and their secondary trait (Militaristic). For what the Aztecs were designed to do (early terrorizing of neighbors), they do it very well.


Dominae

[nbarclay]

More or less copies another trait entirely? Even at cost 10, the Jaguar Warrior didn't come close. The Aztecs did not start with a free unit to get a head start on exploration, and they did not get the advantage of always getting something good instead of barbs from huts (an advantage that is considerably greater in C3C with barbs more frequent now than they were before). Even with the same cost as scouts, Jaguar Warriors would bring a dramatically lower return on investment because popping the same huts would not provide anywhere near the same value.

At cost 15, there is no even remotely plausible case that the Jaguar Warrior replicates the advantages of the Expansionist trait. The advantage it comes closest to matching is straight-line speed for meeting distant civs, but even that advantage comes at a higher cost. And in terms of the amount of terrain that can be uncovered in a given time for a given cost, both for finding good city sites and for uncovering huts, Jaguar Warriors at cost 15 never have more than a slight advantage over regular warriors and can actually be at a disadvantage depending on the terrain.

I also strongly reject the characterization of the Jaguar Warrior at cost 15 as an "aggressive" UU. My tests clearly show that at cost 15, using JWs aggressively is a terrible investment (except perhaps in certain special situations where their speed lets them do something an archer can't and horsemen aren't available).

Yes, the Aztecs' traits in C3C let them handle an early GA with a militarily useless UU a lot better than most civs could. But ironically, with the UU rendered essentially militarily useless in C3C, the classic Aztec tradeoff of having to either use the UU early and trigger a GA or do without the military benefits the UU could bring no longer exists. The Aztecs no longer have a reason to trigger an early GA instead of waiting until the medieval era, or even the early industrial era, if they would rather wait. The only real time factor is that when AIs get Replaceable Parts and start upgrading older units to guerillas, finding a viable target for a JW to pick off to trigger a GA gets harder.

Nathan

[ducki]

And in terms of the amount of terrain that can be uncovered in a given time for a given cost, both for finding good city sites and for uncovering huts, Jaguar Warriors at cost 15 never have more than a slight advantage over regular warriors and can actually be at a disadvantage depending on the terrain.

How do you figure? From Aeson's "On Scouting" thread, the goal of your "scout"(generic term, not unit) is to make contact. Period. Side trips for huts are not "cost" effective. How can a 100% movement increase not be worth a 50% premium?
If you agree with Aeson(I do) that the primary goal in scouting is to make contacts for trading, lower research costs, etc. doing so in half the time for half-again the cost sure seems worth it to me.

I'm not being snarky, I'm curious about your value judgement in the context of the quote.

[pvzh]

How can a 100% movement increase not be worth a 50% premium?

Very simple. If terrain rough (you can hardly find a place to use your 2 move), you better off with warriors. Unless you created a map you do not know what is around on the larger scale.

All UU that gets +1 for movement gets it for free. That is the idea of UU. You get a better unit for the same price.

[ducki]

But that's true of Expansionist civs also - we shouldn't be balancing the unit to the map generator - there lies folly, IMO, as we could pull that argument up for any 2-move UU to support a boost - particularly War Chariots.

Edit: Wrong button.

That is the idea of UU. You get a better unit for the same price.

I'm pretty sure this is not true. Gallic Swords are not the same cost as Swordsmen I don't think. Are Mounted Warriors the same cost as Horsemen? I forget if Chinese Riders cost the same as Knights, but I'm pretty sure there are a fair number of UUs that aren't simply "better unit for the same price", though I've been known to put my foot in my mouth before.

[Dominae]

Gallics cost more than Swordsmen. Mercs cost more than Spearmen.

(It's hard to believe I'm saying this, but) Jags used to be 10-Shield Chariots without the Horses requirement, and they arguably upgrade to something far more useful for a strong opening (Swordsmen). This made them a very unique UU (if I can say that). However, I think they were okay in Play the World (for SP, at least) because Rel/Mil is not exactly the strongest of trait combinations. Agr/Mil is a totally different story. At 15 Shields the Jag is definitely annoying to use compared to what we're used to, but it's nonetheless not a bad UU (above average I would say, depending on your playstyle or goal).

It's not that I think a 10-Shield Jag is sooo unbalanced. Rather, I prefer not changing anything when nothing is particularly broken.


Dominae

[pvzh]

Ops... indeed Galic swordsman cost more, but it is an exception because it makes a fast mover able to retreat. Jags are able to retreat, but with attack 1 it is rather irrelevant in the most cases.

NM cost 30 because it gets 2 upgrades +1 off/+1def.

The broken part of jag-for-15-shields is that they are pretty much not usable beside triggering GA. The only use I see for them is prebuilds for swordsmen and medieval infantry (you do not need to disconnect the iron to build jags if you do not trigger GA), but if you can disconnect iron periodically, you can save a lot of shields building warriors, so even here their use is dubious at best.

Maybe, change their upgrade path to horsemen and keep the price at 15? That indeed will make them resoursless chariot (disabling chariots for them). Aztecs have never built a chariots anyway.

[Krill]

double post.

[Krill]

Ottomans get Siphaphi (sp?) for 100 shields
Russia gets Cossacks for 90 shields
If you are going to nerf the JW, then you have to nerf the enkidu warrior, because 1.2.1 has the same problem as 1.1.2. That it is over powered for the price.
(Please inform me if this is wrong, so i can edit the post, hang my head in shame, and leave the forum while you lot stop laughing at the gaff.)

[nbarclay]

Originally posted by ducki


How do you figure? From Aeson's "On Scouting" thread, the goal of your "scout"(generic term, not unit) is to make contact. Period. Side trips for huts are not "cost" effective. How can a 100% movement increase not be worth a 50% premium?
If you agree with Aeson(I do) that the primary goal in scouting is to make contacts for trading, lower research costs, etc. doing so in half the time for half-again the cost sure seems worth it to me.

I'm not being snarky, I'm curious about your value judgement in the context of the quote.

Scouting units can serve two distinct purposes. One is to head off on essentially a straight line in a particular direction in order to make contact as quickly as possible. I'll call scouts primarilly assigned that duty "long-range scouts" because their goal is to travel great distances. The other purpose is to cover essentially every tile near the capital looking for good city sites and setting up to know where resources are located when the appropriate techs are learned. I'll call scouts primarily assigned to that duty "coverage scouts." Scouts can start off as coverage scouts and shift to being long-range scouts easily enough, but the reverse is not true because a long-range scout has to travel all the way back home before it can engage in coverage scouting.

For normal expansionist civs, it often makes sense to have the same scout units do a bit of coverage scouting before they start operating as long-range scouts. Scouts are no more expensive than warriors, so using them for coverage scouting is always cost-efficient (aside from the fact that they can't serve as patrols or MPs when they're done).

But for the Aztecs at cost 15, the dynamics are very different. If two Jaguar Warriors each spend some time doing coverage scouting before shifting to long-range scouting, the time they waste on coverage scouting eats into their speed advantage making contact with distant civs. On many map types (including the always-popular standard continents type), building three warriors, sending two out immediately as long-range scouts, and using the third as a coverage scout could work as well or better because the scouting units start their long-range operations earlier that way. On the other hand, if the first two Jaguar Warriors immediately go off as long-range scouts, that leaves the player with half the cost of a granary spent and still no units dedicated to uncovering good city sites near home.

For the same investment that gives the Aztecs two high-speed scouting units, a typical expansionist would have four (including the free original), sufficient for long-range scouting in two different directions and very heavy coverage scouting. Further, with one scout free and the rest cheaper, the expansionist civ would get its scouts out a good bit more quickly. The Incas would have only three, but two of those would be Chasquis with a speed advantage on the high ground that scouting units enjoy looking down from so much.

I do agree that even at cost 15, the Aztecs have a considerable advantage over other non-expansionist civs on standard and larger pangea maps and large and huge continents maps in regard to gaining contact early. But on maps that don't have exceptionally large land masses, the advantage of the Jaguar Warrior over scouting with regular warriors is only marginal even for the specific purpose of trying to gain early contact.

At cost 10, the Jaguar Warrior's superior scouting ability compared with regular warriors is very useful on all map types. But at cost 15, I don't see the scouting advantages as being anywhere near great enough to make up for the UU's being essentially useless militarily.

[nbarclay]

In the original Civ 3, UUs always had the same cost as their regular counterparts. PtW introduced UUs that either had both an advantage and a disadvantage and had a lower cost as a result (Ansar and Keshik) and that had an advantage greater than one point but a higher cost (Sipahi, Berserk, Conquistador and Numidian Merc).

The Gallic Swordsman is a special case because whether its advantage over a conventional unit should count as one point or two points depends on what you compare it with. Compared with a swordsman, it has a difference of one point. But compared with a horseman, which is probably the closer comparison in terms of how the unit is likely to be used, it has a two-point difference - one attack and one defense. Firaxis decided to base the unit's cost on the horseman comparison, and I think that was the right choice. (Consider that the Mounted Warrior was already considered arguably the most powerful UU in the game and the Gallic Swordsman had better stats, a better path to build units to upgrade to it, and a civ with traits more suited to a powerful offensive UU.)

To the best of my recollection, there is no UU in the game that does not have an advantage greater than one point compared with a conventional unit (even if it's a different unit from the one the UU is based on, as in the case of the GS) that has a higher cost than its conventional counterpart - except, now, for the Jaguar Warrior.

[nbarclay]

Originally posted by Dominae

At 15 Shields the Jag is definitely annoying to use compared to what we're used to, but it's nonetheless not a bad UU (above average I would say, depending on your playstyle or goal).

I would say that the Jag is only "not a bad UU" at 15 shields for players who view early contact as a major priority and who are playing on a map size and type where the Jag's speed can be put to good use. And even there, the usefulness has absolutely nothing whatsoever to do with the military value of using the unit in combat.

The last time we found a UU that we viewed as possibly militarily inferior to conventional alternatives, we did a lot of discussing how to do something about the situation until an AU game ultimately showed that the unit (the Gallic Swordsman) did in fact provide an advantage rather than a disadvantage. The fact that the Aztecs are not prevented from building the regular unit instead of the UU makes this situation a little less serious than we were afraid that one might be, but the issue of a UU that is militarily worse than conventional alternatives instead of providing a military advantage is very similar.

(And before you mention chariots again, I find it hard to imagine an argument that I would view as more irrelevant. The chariot is by far the worst joke in the entire game as military units go; people build them for upgrade to horsemen or mounted warriors, but that's all they're really used for. Further, considering the fact that the Enkidu matches the capabilities of a vastly more useful cost-20 unit with a cost-10 unit, there can be no valid claim that there is something inherently philosophically wrong with having the Jaguar Warrior match the capabilities of a chariot at half the cost.)

[Aqualung71]

Chariots? What are they?

[Aeson]

My view is that Jags are still powerful at 15 shields. The Aztecs as a civilization are more powerful in C3C under various conditions than they were in Civ/PtW, due to the Agricultural trait. They aren't the defacto #1 on Small and Tiny Pangaea maps that they were, but they fare better in other conditions.

Chariots are not a good comparison as they require Horses and cannot pass various terrain, Mountains being especially important when exploring. A 'Chariot that crosses Mountains, Marshes, and Jungles without requiring Horses or the Wheel all while costing less' is actually a rather big advantage for a unit.

Jags role (and excellence) in AI Worker capture and destroying AI terrain improvements can essentially win your landmass and even future wonder races within the first 20 turns. Stealing a Worker or two from an AI sets it back difficulty levels in how hard it is to deal with. Combining that with the pillaging ability can keep an AI from ever becoming a viable threat.

This is the Jags unmatched capability that warrents their status as a UU, and I don't think it's overpriced at 15 shields.