Unit Strengths by Era

[Jaybe]

Gen.Dragolen,
Isn't it amazing how runs of luck will make us think that certain units are [better/worse] than their stats indicate!

It happens to me, too. Generally only lasts for a few hundred years of a particular game, then next game it's totally different.

[Theseus]

Back OT:

This may be a little heretical, but of the regular units, I think that the Swordsman might be unbalanced.

Consider that with ONE exception, the Swordsman will have a 50% advantage over defenders for a looooong time, at the most critical juncture of the game.

Think of the other typical attackers:

Horsemen: Generally, no point advantage.

Knight-level: A 100% advantage against Spearmen, true, but Feudalism is a prerequisite for Chivalry, and thus all but weakling AI civs should have upgraded. Only 33% on Pikemen, and 0% on Muskets.

Cavs: 50% on Muskets, but have you noticed how much the AI now values Nationalism? 0% against Rifles, and negative 40% on Infantry, which is a common match-up.

Tank-level: 60% on Infantry, good, but remember that at this point defense bonuses from city size will be much more of an issue. Negative 11% on MI. And, often, the game has already been won at this point.

MA: 33% on MI.
_____________________

In the 1337 game, hordes of Legions were simply unstoppable, even by the Greeks.

I would add that China, being militaristic and industrious, makes the Sword threat even worse, with cheap barracks, the fast development of a military road network, and the coup de grace of Riders. Persia, being non-militaristic and industrious, but with the Immortal, is almost as bad.

Thus far, we as a group have still been finding our way towards what early warfare can really do... as I've also thought about the rushing strats that have evidently become dominant in Civ2-MP, I have come to the conclusion that insane Sword rushing in SP will win just about any Large or smaller game (obviously not alone, but setting the stage for a later Knight / Cav / Tank win).

Boring, but true... and unbalanced.

[Gen.Dragolen]

Theseus,

I tend to agree that the swordsman is the most unbalanced unit in the game.

It's advantage over the common units in the ancient age makes the rush to get Iron Working, followed by upgrades to the hordes of Warriors a boring, and predictible pattern for us. Can you imagine what an MP game will be like: it gets down to build 4 cities, get to Ironworking and then send your 8-12 swordmen after your immediate neighbour. You could use an archer rush if you felt like betting against the research times.

This overpowering effect was why I lowered the swordsman's attacking strength to 2 in the mod I was working on. It was still an effective unit, but it made combat more costly. My goal was to make the need for catapults apparent, but for them to do any good, you need at least 8 to damage 1 unit in a turn. What I will need to do is figure out if there is any way to improve their odds of hitting. I mean how hard is it to hit a nice big, stationary stone wall ? This means seige warfare, at which militaries like the Romans and Chinese were masters. Most of the medieval seige engines were imported by the Mongols from the Chinese.

Sun Tzu's contemporaries admonished leaders that attacking a fortified city would cost half your troops. Better to negotiate or use subterfuge. So let us use catapults as a siege engine, and make some rule changes for laying siege to a city. If you can surround it, then it starts to starve, and the AI Civ can either break the siege, negoitate or risk the city's governor surrendering. That at least would make the possibilites of a culture flip seem more like a revolt in a capture city, and not some lame statistical action. (As nice as getting a weakened town for nothing is) The AI will already negotiate for trade and all, so the coding to make it negotiate to break a seige shouldn't be that hard to do.

I can see it now: My troops are approaching a city. I surround it. The siege engines start pounding. An emissary contacts you: "What would it take for you to go away ?"

Cha-CHING!$!$

Makes a nice alternative to sulking when an AI Civ refuses to trade with you.

Nice tangent to the original theme, huh? In any case, from my test games with 2/2/1 swordsmen, they suffered more casualties, but you could still take an unfortified town from spearmen. I tried against a walled town and it would still fall, but again, your casualties increase. It makes building walls a worthwhile endevour for the AI too, as I have never seen a AI City with Walls.

D.

[Jaybe]

Originally posted by Theseus
...
This may be a little heretical, but of the regular units, I think that the Swordsman might be unbalanced.
...

At least they are a dead-end, upgrade wise. Makes it less likely to produce them in lare numbers unless you already have a target and a proper timetable for their use.

[King of Rasslin]

They are not unbalanced! They cannot upgrade to anything. Horsemen can. And swordsmen are slow, very slow. They cannot retreat. They are good for very rough maps, but normally they aren't very good as it is. Catapults do need to be strengthened, however.

[Theseus]

I guess I'm looking at it from another angle... not the unit in and of itself, but considering the context in the flow of the game.

A dedicated Sword strategy is quite simply unopposable by any AI civ within reach, including via galley, from IW up to Gunpowder. Assuming that the player actually does so (and that we're talking about general conditions, which probably means somewhere between 1/4 and 1/2 of all AI civs being attacked), the game is fundamentally over.

I guess my point is, that a single unit type from the Ancient era has that much power makes it unbalanced.

Let me put it this way, 'cause I don;t think any of us have ever looked at the sharp end of the Sword... at higher barb levels, you'll get 16+ reg Horsemen coming at you as a horde. I find that generally manageable... no way I could handle that many Swords, without specifically preparing for it. And you know the AI does not prepare for us to do it.

[King of Rasslin]

Smashing the AI with swordsmen is just as easy as with horsemen, only slower. I don't see any imbalance because the swordsmen are in the open longer and they can see the invasion coming from a mile away. Horsemen can take a city or two before the AI knows what hits them. Riders are incredible for this purpose.

[hr_oskar]

Swordsmen are good, dependable units and most of us who play Emperor and Deity are very good at using them. But I wouldn't call them unbalancing, given their limited mobility.

The reason we're so successful with the Swordsmen is IMO that the AI does a bad job at exploiting their weaknesses. Swordsmen should be brought down in the field, using more mobile units (e.g. Horsemen).

This is what human players will do (the smart ones, that is), and that's why I think they won't be too dominating in MP.

[hr_oskar]

Originally posted by joseph1944


The F-117 is an Ground Attack Fighter, not for Air to Air.
The new F-22 will be Air to Air.

I must join in criticism of the Stealth Fighter unit. I have a hard time understanding its strategic role. It's the #1 unit I would remove from the game to make room for something more interesting.

Not sure what to suggest to improve this unit. The current air combat system is an improvement on Civ2 I think, but still somehow unsatisfactory. Why no dog-fights for example? Why can't we escort our bombers? And why only SAM batteries? - Air defence was developed much earlier than that.

[Gen.Dragolen]

Theseus has hit it exactly: what strategic challenge is it if you know each turn what you have to do to build swordsmen and nothing else ?

Part of the problem is that the combat model makes it the only option. With no way to bombard a city to destroy their walls and other infrastucture and maybe do a little damage to the units hiding in the city, they are all that is left.

All artillery units need to be made a little more realistic in their effect: ancient units will do more damage to buildings than to people, while modern artillery will do more damage to people.

That assumes they actually hit anything: catapults only hit 1 in 8 shots on average, and the damage they inflict is only1 hp.

When I looked at the bombardment settings in the editor, it confirmed that they are useless as siege weapons. The only use I have for artillery at Monarch and above is to either clear terrain improvments or defend. At least on defense, I know they will do 1 hp of damage to the first attacker.

Bombers are even more useless as they never hit anything either. Last time I checked, carpet bombing will ruin anyone's day... and should do the most damage of anything. You do remember pictures of cities in Europe during WWII and of the jungles in Vietnamn where the predominent terrain feature was the crater...

When I have the time, I think I'm going to have to learn to make animated gifs for a WWII vintage flak battery. That will have to be accomplanied by a mobile AAA ground unit. Actually it will simpler just to make it an improvement...

This is all kind of silly since the game is supposed to have units representing divisions, and they have made some less than balanced comprimises in units designs.


D.

[hr_oskar]

Gen. Dragolen: I disagree about the usefulness of Artillery - it's critical IMO to soften up that entrenched Infantry; a healthy percentage of Artillery in your army will make the warfare more cost-effective, by reducing casualties.

I agree however about the need for some mechanism to simulate the difference between primitive and advanced artillery. Catapults and early cannons were only good for siege - field artillery only become really effective in the late industrial age, most notably in WWI.

As it is, the Civ3 catapult is more useful as a field weapon than a siege weapon - it has such a hard time cracking the high defence of an entrenched spearman.

I think for a better simulation of early siege warfare we would need more defensive improvements, and the possibility of neutralizing them.

Also why not cause bombardment to unfortify units? Either as a bonus effect, or as the first thing to happen before hp are lost, and possibly to have this disentrenchment easier than causing actual hp loss. I think if catapults only disentrenched (but more easily), and never caused hp damage, they would be more realistic and useful at the same time.

Must say though, Civ3 is a revolution in these matters when compared to Civ2, which didn't even have bombardment.

[TacticalGrace]

It certainly is an improvement over siv2 where cannon alone could capture a city. but the sadest thing is that artillery was handled better in CTP where it was an invaluable part of any army because it would sit at the back and bombard constantly throughout the battle.

The only thing they got right is the ability to capture unattended artillery.

[Gen.Dragolen]

hr_oskar,

I have tried using Radar Artillery on the offensive and it is even worse for doing damage than standard Artillery.

One of the problems is that the RA should have a movement of 2 or 3 since then are supposed to be a mobile unit, where as the older towed artillery should move the same as an Infantry division. The other problem is effectiveness. Why use a unit that doesn't do anything on the offensive for offensive operations?

A catapult may be able to soften up a fortified spearman, but why use a catapult that needs an escort ? Not to mention that for the most part, heavy units could only be moved on roads, or they were built on site. What you saw at the start of "Gladiator" was a Hollywood version: catapults were used from fortresses or as seige engines only. And in ancient times, the primary way of defeating a city's walls was to build a ramp up to the top of them. Like at Masada for example.

Anyway, with a catapult having an attack strength of 4 firing on a fortified spearman with a defensive strength of in a non-walled size 1 city has a 4 in 7 chance of hitting when attacking according to the combat model. The actual rate is 1 in 8, and that is after recording a hundred attacks over the course of the last 6 months. And that one hit will do 1 hp to a unit or possibly destroy a building (which have a defensive strength of 8).

I'm not saying they need to make it like Stronghold, but they need to rethink how siege warfare is supposed to work if we are to end the imbalance from swordsmen. This means making walls the primary target of catapults and give the walls hit points. A couple of turns bombardment and they will fall. This would make the AI Civ (or at least the city's governor) want to negotiate or you can put the torch the city and put the people to the sword.

TacticalGrace,

I do miss the artillery as it was used in CTPII. For CivIII I would have made it like the other units, but with minimal defensive strength. I hate it when they attack down to their last hp , destroying all the other units, but not the artillery. The artillery should be able to fight back, a Final Protective Fire for each unit in the stack, and should only be captured part of the time: any good artillery man is going to spike his guns if they are about to be captured...

Like I said: these units are good on the defensive but that's all. Even then they are not as useful as the should be. So if we want a game where one unit can't dominate everything like the swordsmen do we need to improve the utility of the support units.

D.

[TacticalGrace]

Originally posted by Gen.Dragolen
I do miss the artillery as it was used in CTPII. For CivIII I would have made it like the other units, but with minimal defensive strength. I hate it when they attack down to their last hp , destroying all the other units, but not the artillery. The artillery should be able to fight back, a Final Protective Fire for each unit in the stack, and should only be captured part of the time: any good artillery man is going to spike his guns if they are about to be captured...

D.

Yes, I was going to say something about spiking the guns. This is simulated in a way in Civ. You can disband a unit if you think it's going to be captured but this will never happen really unless you are moving artillery around without an escort or you inadvertantly come across a big stack of enemy units. This just illustrates that Civ isn't a war game. It just doesn't have the granularity to worry about these kinds of details. One turn is afterall by default at least one year.

The CTP approach is the best one and really would add a whole extra dimension to the game. It would also give purpose to all the units that don't quite make sense: armies would be more useful and realistic; archers would start behaving like they do in real life rather than some sort of odd assualt unit; the artillery units would be useful; air support could be integrated into the battle in a more realistic manner.

The only problem with CTP combat system was that the AI couldn't handle it which utterly took tahe fun out of it.

[vmxa1]

Maybe this is not the proper place for this, but since the129f the transport is an awe inspiring unit. I had one take down a battleship. Is the civped out of date or is the number it gives for transports correct? It says it is weak and has an attack of 1. I had to take to running arties over to bombard them before attacking them. They opened up with machine gun fire?

[Admiral PJ]

I think normal tanks (ind.era) may be too powerful , though i would make them have higher movement than the cavalry(cavalry should be better for all terrain travel - legs are a good solution to rough terrain)
Edit: the tanks attack should be reduced and it should be given a short bombard attack(bombard is vital)
How about light tanks too, which are faster but weaker in attack/def, they could outrun and retreat from the heavy tanks though if they're well trained.

I think more units are needed later, to make it more realistic.. if you think of the different types of millitary vehicles developed in the cold war you see as we 'progress' there is a bigger variety. More industrial and modern units are needed - to make a more variable faster attack force, but for game balance sake they shouldn't be overpowerful.

Maybe there should be more gradual shifts in unit development.. bring back Dragoons! (make them fast and light) and once swordmen have become outdated , they must be removed and replaced with something sensible for the modern eras ( dosen't matter if its got crappy gfx as long as its suitable for modern era ie a militiaman) swords should go out of date with riflemen, when guns are effective enough.

Excellent game! lets hope they can make it even better.

[XOR]

Originally posted by MagnusMarcus
First things first....
This game is the greatest. I think the developers did an outstanding job with this game. All the nay-sayers can go code a game themselves. With that out of the way there is one thing that disturbed me.... I had, in a recent game, 16 brave marines preparing to spearhead an assault on another continent. Basically I planned on bombing a city and then assaulting with the marines from the sea. And then following up with 4 transports of tanks which could then unload from the city I had just taken and continue to move and assault the enemy. Through careful planning I also had available two "Armys". I thought it would be excellent to put together two armys of marines to minimize casualties. Imagine my dismay when I went to assault the enemy and found out that the Marine "Armys" had forgotten how to attack from the sea! The rest of the marines were able to secure the city but now I was left with two army's of marines which were tactically ineffective. So I guess my question is.....
Q.) Will there ever be a patch to allow Marine "Armys" to remember how to attack from the sea like all the other Brave Marines. Or are Marine Armies basically containers to house all the marines deemed cowards and failures?

Happenned to me as well. I built 4 armies of Marines that time. Except I had no brave marines, I loaded tanks in the remaining space.

This thread about Paratroopers being totally useless. I, BTW, disbanded most of those 61 Paratroopers in cconquered cities, to hurry up temples and courthouses.
http://apolyton.net/forums/showthrea...threadid=60499

Proceding to self quotation and I hope this is not tought of as spam as I had not noted this thread until now. I posted the other thread to ask about what/if something will be done about these units.

1. Cruise Missile: This looks more like a shortened range scud missile to me. (The addition of scud missiles would be nice BTW). But the current cruise missile is all weird, it does not load into submarines or carriers, it can be fired from anywhere on the ground, it fires barely at artillery range and it can take up to 3 of them to kill a tank.
2. Paratroopers: Jumping from airbases and non-airport cities and increasing their range to about 8 or 9 would make them nice. I was trying to mod that but I dont know how to do it...
3. Explorer: So useless that people use it to... pillage? And I cant imagine an explorer pillaging. I dont know how could it be improved, but I know it's not any usefull.
4. The submarines: They're so damn weak... They should be scary, maybe a bit fragile but definately very scary.

Carriers also dont carry much, but they work just fine when building them in groups of 4. Or I could be saying that you cant have a decent airstrike from carriers unless you build them in groups of 4. I dont mind, I just go with the groups of 4 thing.

[Blue Moose]

Admiral PJ:

The normal tanks are WWII equivalent tanks, in which case they should have a movement of 3, I think. Though, they should be able to handle pretty much any terrain as well as Cavalry (though perhaps Tanks shouldn't be allowed into unroaded mountains). Tanks were originally made as attacking vehicles that could withstand machine gun fire and go over trenches (WWI tanks did this, though they mostly stunk). As such they are pretty good at going over most terrain. Even in WWII the german Panzer's could easily run over most small trees (one a few inches thick wasn't a problem at all). So they could manage forests, though at a slower movement rate (which is how things are). However...they should be able to move as fast as horses...a bit silly, in my opinion....Calvary is a bit strange too, really...where'd these fast horses come from? If anything, Horseman and Cavs should be just as fast, but knight not (weighted down by all that armor)...but I realize why this isn't how it is (game balance).

Other thoughts:

The main problem with artillery is that is moves far, far too slow. It is useless for offense, since you want to move quickly. Take multiple cities a turn if you can....and you just don't have time for the dinky 1-MP artillery to get into position. Things are better with bombers, since a neighboring city or multiple carriers are good enough; though you need a heck of a lot for cities (and you kill all those people too...). Artillery is really only good for defensive positions, forts and cities....hitting them when they attack cities, and as they approach. Then again...bombers can do this job pretty well, and bombers have other uses as well....so typically I just build a bunch of bombers and use them as need (with rebasing they are fairly mobile). I hardly ever use artillery...captured ones come in handy though...but that's just because they are at the scene of combat on occasion. Really, from cannons on, these things should have at least move 2...as they were either mechanized to some extent, or horses were used to move them around.....then again, this wouldn't be as much of a problem if you had a good way to defend your borders...or if infantry was needed for anything other than a defensive role. Oh well.

-Moose

[alexman]

MarkG, isn't it time to un-top this very old thread? Besides much of the information here being no longer relevant, I could name at least 10 strategy threads that deserve to be topped before this one.

[Harovan]

alexman: If you want a thread topped/untopped, best is to PM a link to a moderator. For this thread don't bother, I already sent a PM to Ming.

EDIT: And Markos, because it needs the magic of 2 mods to untop a thread, started by GOD himself .

[Trebor]

AA

[Explorer579]

Immortals are my favorite! They are too powerful if you start making them before other civilizations.

Wanna win a game early, easy and at higher difficulty levels? Here is my scenario:
1) Play persians;

2) start researching iron working;

3) give other civilizations what they want (don't get them angry at you yet);

4) before you are about to find iron working, have a settler protected by a spearman ready to move for settling and have two workers ready to build roads;

5) as you discover iron working, find the iron closest to and safest to you and go build a city next to it and have the workers start building a road to it;

6) trade maps with other cultures around you;

7) prepare two spearman a boat if needed;

8) take/land these two spearman on your first designated enemy's potential source of iron. never make him connect to this resource. you can wait if the enemy does not have a road to the iron yet.

9) build barracks first then immortals. you will have trained immortals.

10) as soon as you have 3 immortals, keep producing immortasl (just immortals) and start invading the enemy city next to you.

10) finish off the first cvilization (or reduce it to one city)then start with the second.

11) do not forget to accept peace with enemy form time to time after you beat them hard just to get all their technology, money, and maybe a city or two.

Enjoy! Iran rule!

[Zero]

immortals are overrated... attack of 4 is very desirable, but they are still "mortal" when being attacked with only defense of 2. Of course thats the best you can have in ancient age so its not bad or anything but A shrewd Roman player can defeat Persian Immortals.

When Legions attack Immortal the odds are 3 VS 2 % wise thats a 50% more favorable toward Legion

When Immortal Attack Legion the odds are 4 VS 3 thats 33% more favorable for Immortal.


In addition Roman Militaristic trait allows far more barracks and promotion for GL and better quality units. Thus, using all these adv. Roman player can beat a Persian rusher.

Persians do start with bronze working. That is very advantageous as it allows Immortals faster than Legion I admit.

[Zero]

Same could apply to Greeks beating Persia, except unit would be hoplite/Swordmen mixed stack (so when defending and attacking its still 3/3) and You would have to ignore Roman militaristic edge. But for sacrificing Mil, You'll get sci trait, so you will start off with equal footing with Persia in that you will have bronze working.

[Muddi]

personaly I like the mesketeers extra attack point. When you've thrown all your units at a city and you can see they have a unit with one hp left, its great being able to use musket to take that city rather than letting it heal up good as new next turn


Bombarding formula should be revised.
They should kill less pop. & builbings and injure more units <--- Bombers should have objectives (destroy harbor for example)

It would make sense knigh having zone of control. why? Because they are lords and nobles of course

-I don't what Frigates to be UPGADEABLE to Destoryers but I want to make them obsolete with destoyers. This can't be done for now. <-- the reason for this is so that if you loose your supply of oil, you can still build a navy. An old ship is better than no ship dude.

I think a cost increase is in order for all the retreat-capable units,<-- the cost is you have to guard (or have) a supply of horses.

Decrease the % chance of a unit withdrawing from combat (make it something other than automatic)
thats a good idea

it just doesn't make any sense whatsoever that a civ will have ancient 4000 BC warriors in 1950 AD<--- have you ever heard of the dark ages? Where alot of tech was lost after the fall of the roman empire? This can be represented by loss of resources (a great part of the game)

And like someone said.... frigates (or any wooden man-of-war pre-explosives era) should NOT be able to take out a submarine. <--- whos to say that a wooden ship cant use depth charges. Just cos the hull is old doesnt mean they cant put more modern weapons on board

[player1]

Originally posted by Muddi
Decrease the % chance of a unit withdrawing from combat (make it something other than automatic)
thats a good idea

It's already done.
Take a patch.

[Arrian]

I just noticed something: the Turkish UU in PTW is 8/3/3 Cavalry. Madness!

The Gallic warrior or whatever is incredibly powerful as well, but 50 shields in the ancient era is quite an investment. Though I think that unit is probably overpowered.

The Turkish Cav UU is 100 shields, which isn't really all that much more than regular Cav (80 shields, IIRC). Madness, I tell you!

-Arrian

[lockstep]

Originally posted by Arrian
I just noticed something: the Turkish UU in PTW is 8/3/3 Cavalry. Madness!

Or at least a good reason not to skip Nationalism as a neighboring civ.

[player1]

Originally posted by Arrian
The Gallic warrior or whatever is incredibly powerful as well, but 50 shields in the ancient era is quite an investment. Though I think that unit is probably overpowered.

Although, comparing it with MW cost of 30, you could say that Celts are at disadvantage.

Cost of 50 is more apropriate for "normal unit" with similar stats, not an UU.

[vmxa1]

Are you talking about the ottomans Sipahi, it is 7 3 3 in the manual. I have not looked at the unit after the patch.