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.

[ducki]

If MechInf had "real" bombard - range 1 or 2 - would the AI use it, or would that be a human-only benefit?

Edit: The reason I ask is that I don't recall us ever trying to give "normal" units a "real" bombard ability. I know the AI is rotten at conventional bombard units, but it already builds Inf and Mech Inf and takes them along with their MA - right? Something the human does to a lesser degree? So if the AI is able to use the bombard ability with a unit it already builds/uses, would that be close enough to stock while aiding the AI? Is it possible that MI is the "problem" unit as opposed to MA?

[Risa]

More and more radical...

If MechInf had real bombard, what were the point of radar artillery?

[nbarclay]

As I said before, boosting the MechInf would cause balance problems when MechInfs are attacked by tanks or other pre-MA units.

I'm not really convinced that there's a problem here. In raw stats, MAs have an overwhelming advantage over MechInfs, but keep in mind that the MechInfs are often in metropolises rather than mere cities. Further, the metropolicses may very well have civil defense city improvements, and will almost certainly be under the cover of radar towers unless and until the radar towers are taken out. So the MechInfs end up being much tougher nuts to crack than their raw stats make it look like they ought to be. Without the "bigger stack" phenomenon, in which winning defenders get injured and hence become easier prey for the next unit to attack them, MAs would often find themselves seriously overmatched.

The romps where MAs seem ridiculously overpowered are normally against infantry, not MechInfs. But anyone who watched news footage from Desert Storm a decade or so back shouldn't find that kind of lopsided result particularly surprising.

Nathan

[ducki]

Originally posted by Risa
More and more radical...

If MechInf had real bombard, what were the point of radar artillery?

For the AI, no different, as anecdotal evidence suggests the AI blows at using bombard-specialized units.
Which was why I asked if it would use "real" bombard if given to a unit it normally produces and uses in combined-arms fashion.

Yes, more radical, but I still wonder if the AI would use bombard "better" if it wasn't just a bombard-specific unit - i.e. it doesn't have to build a stack of artillery doom, it just has to know to use the bombard ability of the MIs it already builds anyway.

Boosting MI is probably not the best idea, and yes, this thought excercise is fairly radical, but from Theseus' 1st response, followed by his 2nd response, I'm just brainstorming on ideas that might be better than "better than nothing". I'd rather not have to settle for "better than nothing".

[pauli]

my question is, how well does the ai use tow infantry against ma?

[alexman]

TOW infantry is just a no-resource defender in the Guerilla upgrade path. It's not supposed to have any special ability againts Modern Armor in the game, despite its real life purpose.

[alexman]

Under consideration:

Yes/No: Reduce defensive strength to 14

Voting on Friday.

[Dominae]

Originally posted by alexman
Yes/No: Reduce defensive strength to 14

Yes.

[alexman]

Yes

[lockstep]

YES.

[ZargonX]

Yes

[Kuciwalker]

Why not reduce its attack as well? That seems to be where a lot of the problem actually comes from.

[Theseus]

Y

[nbarclay]

Reduce the MA's attack value and you give players even more reason to bombard away most of the defenders' hit points before attacking. If you look at the kind of defensive bonuses a MechInf gets defending a metropolis, are MAs really overpowered offensively? Consider, especially, that cavalry can retreat from musketmen but MAs can't retreat from MechInfs.

Certainly, MAs are absurdly overpowered against infantry, but state-of-the-art offensive units are always overpowered against obsolete defenders: knights against spearmen, cavalry against pikemen, tanks against riflemen, and so forth. That's the reward players get for building up a large tech lead.

[Theseus]

Just to make it clear: We are soley voting on reducing to d14.

I agree with Nathan re attack value.