I played a few games on endless difficulty by now and it is of little consequence what faction (there are some exceptions, e.g. Broken Lords) i play it always plays the same way:



1) Prioritize Production over everything else, i.e. first techs of each era are production techs (with the exception of roads, they are just too good), new cities are founded on production heavy tiles even if there are nice non-production anomalies nearby and set nearly all workers to production

2) once you get some cities in age 3 up and running you can spam masses of units and overrun most enemies



Observations:

3) the enemy often lacks armies, once you break their first 2-4 armies they are gone and can not replace losses fast enough

4) once the enemy looses armies his whole empire falls in very few turns, because the garrisons are total pushovers



In general, production is just too important throughout the game and enemy empires that don't focus on it lack armies. It gets even worse because you can use production for stockpiles and production cost for most buildings scale through the roof in later ages. I really don't know what the ai is doing during it's turns: yes it has a few more techs, cities and bigger cities but it does not come close in military wise, especially when it comes to replacing losses. this is especially bad because city defenses are negligible once you defeated their armies. Imho currently production focus is mandatory, but i would like to see it as an option among others.



I wonder if it would be better to deemphasize production in general, i.e.:



a) reduce building costs, especially in later ages.

b) slightly reduce unit production costs.

c) increase unit upkeep costs, so it does not matter if you can spam units, you still need dust to support them

d) tweak or change (but this is another discussion) the garrison mechanic, e.g. a simple change could be that you have to reduce the city defenses to zero before you can attack it (to prevent steamrolling over a whole empire once it looses a few units)

I fully agree with your C point - many other 4X games use this method.

Make upkeep costs that aren't just symbolic. And they can't just scale linearly with the number of units. Past a certain amount of units, the upkeep cost should increase even more significantly.



I've also made a whole thread regarding what you posted as your D point. I agree, sieges should be needed, cities should not fall so suddenly.

The siege mechanic has become pointless again with the combat changes - at one point in the beta it was fairly mandatory to siege for a few turns to lower the DEF bonus, but no longer. It really should be made relevant again.



I haven't checked, but do militia level in any relevant way by era? They should also remain relevant to avoid the steamroll described above imo.



Scaling will always be a thing in EL due to the extremely high fids income from workers that give such huge amounts and can be adjusted from one yield to another at any time.

Another thing, part of the reason why Production is "overpowered" compared to the other basic resources is that the improvements that generate resources are a bit too much.

For example, it's more worthwile to invest in Production to quickly build your Food Producing Improvments than it would be to invest in Food directly.. Exception being to invest in Dust so you can buyout stuff instead of producing it.

Seek wrote:
I haven't checked, but do militia level in any relevant way by era? They should also remain relevant to avoid the steamroll described above imo.

I'm not sure, but I am sure that they do are irrelevant at any point of the game, despite high Fortification values.

tesb wrote:
I played a few games on endless difficulty by now and it is of little consequence what faction (there are some exceptions, e.g. Broken Lords) i play it always plays the same way:



1) Prioritize Production over everything else, i.e. first techs of each era are production techs (with the exception of roads, they are just too good), new cities are founded on production heavy tiles even if there are nice non-production anomalies nearby and set nearly all workers to production

2) once you get some cities in age 3 up and running you can spam masses of units and overrun most enemies



Observations:

3) the enemy often lacks armies, once you break their first 2-4 armies they are gone and can not replace losses fast enough

4) once the enemy looses armies his whole empire falls in very few turns, because the garrisons are total pushovers



In general, production is just too important throughout the game and enemy empires that don't focus on it lack armies. It gets even worse because you can use production for stockpiles and production cost for most buildings scale through the roof in later ages. I really don't know what the ai is doing during it's turns: yes it has a few more techs, cities and bigger cities but it does not come close in military wise, especially when it comes to replacing losses. this is especially bad because city defenses are negligible once you defeated their armies. Imho currently production focus is mandatory, but i would like to see it as an option among others.



I wonder if it would be better to deemphasize production in general, i.e.:



a) reduce building costs, especially in later ages.

b) slightly reduce unit production costs.

c) increase unit upkeep costs, so it does not matter if you can spam units, you still need dust to support them

d) tweak or change (but this is another discussion) the garrison mechanic, e.g. a simple change could be that you have to reduce the city defenses to zero before you can attack it (to prevent steamrolling over a whole empire once it looses a few units)

I don't think production is unbalanced compared to Food, Science, Dust and Influence. The problem, as I see it anyway, is that maps too easily can be grunt-rush, steam-rolled. Lowering production costs of units isn't going to help with that. Increasing upkeep costs would help a bit, but I'd suggest approval rating penalties either instead of or in addition to this. I very much like the idea of mandatory (or near mandatory sieges). I personally like the way Europa Universalis handles this. You can attack a city before its walls are down, but you're going to take massive losses. As far as taking defenses down goes, each turn you get a roll which has a chance to weaken the city's defenses. The chance increases as the siege goes on and defenses are eventually reduced to zero.

The problems you are describing are really AI problems (too passive, doesn't defend itself) and not anything that the game system needs to be rewritten for...



In any strategy game with an economy (4X, RTS or other) it's always a good idea to focus on economy early. The traditional counter is early aggression, which requires players to focus on military early, which reduces their economy.



Please note that Militia is not intended to be the universal answer to city defense. You really need to Garrison some troops if you expect to stop a decent size army from rolling over your city



I do tend to agree on upkeep costs though, they don't really feel like a limiting factor.

In any strategy game with an economy (4X, RTS or other) it's always a good idea to focus on economy early. The traditional counter is early aggression, which requires players to focus on military early, which reduces their economy.

well, that is a truism, but it is particularity bad in EL because FIDSI scales not linearly, i.e. an early expansion in Starcraft does not nearly has such run away effects as in EL imho. My main point however is that production is too important, e.g. a focus on technology is not nearly as strong, because you can't make use of all those techs (unlocked buildings/units have to be build after all).

Propbuddha wrote:
The problems you are describing are really AI problems (too passive, doesn't defend itself) and not anything that the game system needs to be rewritten for...

The AI is most definitely not too passive. If it were any more aggressive players would get steam-rolled before they could possibly defend themselves. That isn't the issue. The original post stated the problem perfectly- after you take out an AI player's main army their entire empire crumbles in a few turns. It's not a matter of passive or aggressive behavior on the AI's part. They simply can't replace fallen troops fast enough to avoid being steam-rolled. Windwalker and Vaulter heroes can have 10 movement, cavalry units and flyers can have 14. That generally works out to less than 5 turns to reach any point on a huge map. It also usually means that once I take one city from any given empire, the next is at most two turns away. If I either have higher initiative than the AI's armies or bring a couple healers along I end battles with little to no damage. So taking down an entire empire which has 7 or 8 cities currently takes 10 turns or less (and once one empire falls, the FIDSI boost from that insures that the rest will soon follow). Making the AI more aggressive isn't going to change that. Bumping city defense bonuses even further might help a bit, provided militia stop leaving their posts to join nearby battles as reinforcements. The better solution, IMO however, is to incorporate a mandatory (or near mandatory) siege phase. Coding that would require a relatively simple sub-routine. It wouldn't constitute an extensive rewrite of the game system.

Addendum to last post- I had been playing a balanced development approach and winning with it either through score at turn 300 or one of the military options at turn 250 or so. Based on the feedback I'd read here, I focused more on unit production and finished my next game at turn 117 on serious difficulty, normal speed, huge map 8 players (7 AI). I bumped the difficulty to impossible with other settings the same on my next game and got overrun on turn 39. My conclusion is that spamming units is by far the easiest path to victory in the current build, so much so that the other options aren't even worth bothering with. At impossible and endless difficulty it's not only the most sensible path, it's the only way to survive. Until and unless this changes, discussions of tech, faction and city development optimization are entirely moot. Beyond tier 2 weapons and armor it doesn't bloody matter what you research or what city developments you build (against the AI anyway). Either I get steam-rolled before I'm able to field 6 decent units (usually between turn 40 and 50 at normal speed), or I steam-roll the AI. Period.

i never had the ai declare war on me before age 3 to 4 on endless difficulty, but even when it finally does it usually has 1-2 armies and most of the times i win those engagements with a couple of losses. the big difference is that ai does not exploit a military victory by swiftly capturing my cities (like i do when i break the ai armies) and it never commits it's it economy to full on warfare for that period (all cities to max production producing only units and buying a couple of heroes in peace time that level up in cities).



i am coming from mostly civ 4/alpha centauri and the difference in those games is, that a weaker military faction can still have a lot of units and/or production capabilities (although stacks of doom are a sucky mechanic). in civ 5 and endless legend i often get the impression that you are almost a warmonger if you even have some units. i would really like to see a shift in endless legend to lesser focus on production, easier way to produce units but a more costly upkeep. imho any faction should have at least 2-3 armies and if you want to go to war we are talking about 6+ armies. currently i often overrun the map with 3 armies ...

tesb wrote:
i never had the ai declare war on me before age 3 to 4 on endless difficulty, but even when it finally does it usually has 1-2 armies and most of the times i win those engagements with a couple of losses. the big difference is that ai does not exploit a military victory by swiftly capturing my cities (like i do when i break the ai armies) and it never commits it's it economy to full on warfare for that period (all cities to max production producing only units and buying a couple of heroes in peace time that level up in cities).

This is what I mean by too passive. When the AI decides to declare war, it is rarely in a position to do any damage unless you totally neglected any defense.

tesb wrote:
i never had the ai declare war on me before age 3 to 4 on endless difficulty, but even when it finally does it usually has 1-2 armies and most of the times i win those engagements with a couple of losses.

That hasn't been my experience on serious or impossible difficulty, at least not when my starting position is close to Necros or Cultists. I've only played about 5 games since the 1.0 release, but I got attacked in era 2 on three of those. In two cases I'd been lucky enough with Dust and Titanium rewards from ruins that I survived the attacks. In the most recent case on Impossible difficulty, I wasn't so lucky. That's fine, playing a huge Pangaea map in Civ 5 on Deity leaves you pretty much feeling like King Leonidas at Thermopylae too.

well cultists can get out of hand if you don't constantly raze the pacified villages, one easy way to deal with them is to settle around them and close borders



most of the time it is me declaring war on the enemy though