Kaerbear wrote:

I think this is theorycraft more than actual gameplay. A few thoughts :

1) You should try it after the last patch. My experience is you tend to hit closer to 6 than 15. 

2) You're limited by physical space and army size. Remember, when the "tank" guy attacks you, every hit is a kill. When you attack, you need several hits to kill. So in a fight of 7 v 7 units, if you attack first and you (charitably) kill 2 tanks, you still lose 5 units on the counter. And that's assuming 3 hits to kill a tank (And I don't think that's true, I think at BEST you're doing 4 hits, but honestly it's probably 10.

3) You're limited by lack of range and mobility. The later era units can use out of combat attacks (Heavy Weapons) as well as air strikes and such. 

I think this is one of those things that looks terrifying on paper but if you try to actually do it it won't work as well as you think. And you can't just rush the early game with archers because they can't swim so if you have enemies on the other shore by the time you get there it's way overdone. I'd suggest playing with the new changes and see how it feels, but honestly I'm really struggling to see how this would work in practice. 

You seem to think its just theorycrafting, it is not. And sure I can just rush the game with archers. I have done so before, before the patch and will do it again. If not Archers then the next best unit that the formula makes overpowered at the moment, because patching holes in faulty formulas with artificial solutions always opens new ones. I don't really know what to say about your "archers can't swim" part, because the other continents are usually irrelevant? Most players play on 1 continent + New World, and even if there's multiple, by the time you've conquered your home continent its only a matter of time until you win, either by fame or by conquest, the lead obtained is just too large if you do so quickly.

I find it curious that you have not related to any point I've raised about the formula's other side effects than the one which I've illustrated with the archers vs tank scenario, side effects which by themselves are possibly each dire enough to probably want to change it. But since you listed three points, I'll respond to them.

1. Firstly, let me repeat myself - I have repeated again and again, that the Archers vs Tank is just an example of the myriad faults in the formula - illustrating that the optimal strategy is often to use long outdated units, rather than up to date ones, and all the patchwork could have done is change just how outdated - it didn't change how the formula works, only added another artificial threshold on top. It does not affect the formula itself, only adds a notion of artificial "anachronicity" and hence sadly doesn't actually change the wider issues which the formula is associated with. Even for the very issue that it was meant to address, even if the damage of Archers vs Tanks after the bandaid were to be closer to 6, it'd still only take 5 archers per tank (30+24+18+12+6 = 90% of the tank's hp) - which is still more than cost efficient considering the difference between industry costs and how much that lets you snowball, and how you can exploit growth atm, and that is the worst case scenario popwise for Archers pretty much. They will do the same to Rifles, except Rifles are 4 pops. And you can buff units with certain civs to the point where it doesn't really matter what you use, with the cheapest units being the best targets for it. And its far from the only issue with the formula.

2. Army size? Army size was never any kind of limit, you just make multiple armies. And physical space is permissive enough with battlefields occupying multiple territories, that it doesn't matter either. Each enemy unit can only attack once per round. There is literally no way for them to win a battle against you in one game turn even with overwhelming force - there is just not enough rounds, and that's a big issue if you can just mass produce archers or whatever other cheap unit ends up being the most efficient in a particular matchup after the addition of the bandaid formula, and literally hold all their cities ransom as they try to shoot through them all and fail, as you concentrate your efforts taking the less defended cities as they can't do anything but watch. Also, line of sight is a thing and tanks must abide by it, you do not, so in an actual battle it favours you even more. Worst case scenario? You pick England and spam longbows from medieval onwards till the end, when they are basically free in industry also, but have 1 more range and enough combat strength that you can avoid oneshots with a bunch of buffs quite trivially.

3. Yeah. I literally listed bombardment as a counter. But by then the game is long over. If Ancient Era units reign supreme through eras 2, 3, 4 and arguably 5, and only really have counters in the sixth (and that's with the last two eras flying by in 10-20 turns at most in serious play if I'm being generous), then something is clearly wrong.

But the thing is, like I've said multiple times by now - its not about archers or any other unit at all - its about the formula and the wonky interactions it enables.

The formula which makes it so that fielding Archers against Chariots on an open field (CS +15 on damage taken and CS -5 on damage dealt) is industry efficient. The formula that makes them unrivalled killers of medieval and early modern units, regardless of what, if anything, the "fix" truly changed in later eras that fly by in a blink. The formula which makes it so that your melee units are always taking the damage floor damage from enemies that aren't of higher eras, because they are always 4 or more CS stronger than ranged ones, so fortifications and defensive terrain (or even the +10 from dug-in) do absolutely nothing as the damage is capped anyway - and even the damage floor is 75% of the damage at +0, so it is no real damage reduction at all.

The formula which makes it so that going from +0 to +13 CS adds 43 damage per hit (+3.3 per point), yet going from +13 to +16 CS adds... 37 damage per hit (+12.3 per point). The formula which makes it so that +8 and +15 and the whole range of seven inbetween are the exact same because it is both a two shot, and anything +16 or above is a one shot, and that is often achievable between units of the same era, making units of higher eras better at neither damaging nor at taking damage against those of an era or two lower. The formula which makes each buff to CS worth more, the cheaper and lower CS the unit that receives it. The formula which forces civilian units of later eras to have hugely inflated combat strength lest they be oneshot by anything of their own era, which results in them in turn oneshotting knights in full plate with shovels?

It is not granular, it is threshold based, and it is not intuitive to understand at all, nor is it easy to balance gameplay around - did you perhaps wonder why there were multiple bandaid attempts to "fix" the formula's outcomes, in the beta and now? Perhaps because it is flawed at its core. And perhaps what should be fixed is not the outcome - but the root cause.

Apologies if I sound frustrated - its just that writing the same thing for the seventh time , slightly paraphrased with attention given to different details, can be quite grating on my nerves :)

Kaerbear wrote:

Crunbum wrote:

Kaerbear wrote:

So, maybe I'm missing something, but don't you need 186 population to make 186 archers? Who are going to hit for 6 basically. Why would you use these? Do you actually win with this strategy? I'm curious how it works in practice.

Yes and no.
If you spam archers (or an appropriate cheap unit), the game will end well before tanks is one thing, they are merely a good example to point out the issue.

But higher era units tend to cost more than 1 pop. For example, tanks cost 3. And 3 archers will already beat a Tank because they do not hit for 6 (or at least did not when I first made this thread, I am not aware of the exact extent/formula of the penalty which anachronistic units now face - only that it restricts them to a lower bound within the damage range, so I cannot say for sure how many it would take, but certainly not more than 5 even if it were that severe - and the flaws in the core combat formula remain). Therefore you are paying zero industry and upkeep and the same amount of population to beat the opposition.

You can't make 186 Archers to beat a Tank because population. But you don't need to make 186. You just need to make 3, which is the same pop as the tank. And, whereas the opponent will be hard pressed to mass-produce units, you will just produce 50 in a single turn in one backwater city with hardly any industry even, converting all its pop to an army that will be able to fight 62 turns of the enemy's production in a similar city on even grounds. If completely anachronistic units turn out not to work now because of some patchwork bandaid? Well, you make slightly less anachronistic ones to much the same effect.

You don't need a standing army (within reason). You just make units instantly when you need them. You pay no upkeep, you don't waste industry (or pops jobs) on units that you will need 10 or 20 turns later. You just spam districts and if you suddenly find yourself needing 100 archers for a war - you make 100 archers in one turn.

And even if you make a respectable standing army, well... you need 3 Archers to beat one tank, so you now have the leftover 183 Archers worth of industry and gold to convert into districts and whatnot. And that's what happens every era past ancient. You get way more industry than other civs, because you are spamming obsolete units that cost almost none of said industry. Therefore you get more districts, more industry, more gold, more science, more food, more pops...

It snowballs.

Archers are possible to counter once artillery takes the field, via bombardment. But at this point you are so far ahead it doesn't even matter, and they will still clear other contemporary units with ease if the enemy doesn't bombard you. Furthermore, by that point you can take Soviets, build a bunch of their weapon districts, and have your Archers one shot their tanks while taking the damage floor themselves, because all the CS modifiers are flat instead of % so its not even hard, especially with how much you've snowballed by then.

Okay, hyperbole. But you can feasibly make your Archers (or a slightly better equivalent) be not one-shot by the enemy's contemporary units, and at that point they can bombard all they want.

I think this is theorycraft more than actual gameplay. A few thoughts :

1) You should try it after the last patch. My experience is you tend to hit closer to 6 than 15. 

2) You're limited by physical space and army size. Remember, when the "tank" guy attacks you, every hit is a kill. When you attack, you need several hits to kill. So in a fight of 7 v 7 units, if you attack first and you (charitably) kill 2 tanks, you still lose 5 units on the counter. And that's assuming 3 hits to kill a tank (And I don't think that's true, I think at BEST you're doing 4 hits, but honestly it's probably 10.

3) You're limited by lack of range and mobility. The later era units can use out of combat attacks (Heavy Weapons) as well as air strikes and such. 

I think this is one of those things that looks terrifying on paper but if you try to actually do it it won't work as well as you think. And you can't just rush the early game with archers because they can't swim so if you have enemies on the other shore by the time you get there it's way overdone. I'd suggest playing with the new changes and see how it feels, but honestly I'm really struggling to see how this would work in practice. 

Just to add: the tank can only kill one unit per combat round. So in theory the archers have 3 rounds to attack. Before the recent Patch it was possible to just kill a tank with 4-5 lucky rolls. Because any number between 5 and 20 had the same chance to occur. And I concur with Crunbum about the math.

This issue is somewhat similar to the corvette issue from Stellaris. The most cost effective fleet is barebones corvettes. They can kill still battleships and the cost in material is or was lower than battleships. Not sure if they fixed that yet, but it was meta for a very long time.

teatimeG wrote:

I think you should play on harder difficulties if you are actually winning by spamming ancient era archers against your foes main battle tanks. The problem is units drain population. So you can make 100 archers, but then your cities have no population left. And when you attack, you are limited by how many units physically fit into the relevant space. As mentioned by others, the best you can probably do is 8 or so attacks, which might kill 2 units. But then on their counter attack they get 8 or so attacks, killing off 8 of yours!

If you are playing properly, you'll have enough production in your cities to make contemporary units in 1 or 2 turns. I think the entire thread is coming from a place of "I rushed research to Redcoats but lol they take 15 turns each to make!" Then you declare war on your neighbor who is still using Carthage war elephants and get stomped then rush here to make a thread about how the game is broken.

The game is not broken. Your playstyle was suboptimal. And they did actually patch it so that ancient era units don't do 25 damage against contemporary era units anymore. Because even if you are on a difficulty level where massive hunnic horde spam works all the way from when you first get them until the end of the game, there should be some diminishing returns.

I am writing because 100 hours in, I don't feel the combat is "fundamentally flawed."

I think it's fundamentally awesome and wouldn't change it!

Perhaps a bit of tweaking for some circumstances, would be nice if stealth actually did anything, a few things like that. But nothing fundamental.

Why are you assuming that I'm not playing on Humankind difficulty? And its way too easy with archer spam. Not that that's any surprise to me, because the only true test and metric of what is viable or optimal in 4X games is multiplayer.

Yes, the combat is awesome. Definitely the best I've ever seen in a 4X game. The formula behind it, however, is flawed and should be changed, simple as that, and the reasons for coming to this conclusion I have already stated aplenty, and none of them are based on "feeling that the combat is fundamentally flawed", but rather on analysis.

Maybe, just maybe, you should stop assuming that someone's playstyle was "suboptimal" because they are complaining about a formula that is just not doing its job. Or that I am taking "1 to 2 turns to make redcoats". If that's what you understood from what I've written (redcoats are one of the weakest units in the game because of the inflated pop cost, and I have no issues making several tanks a turn per city, let alone them btw), then I have no words. One player can make 4 redcoats (16 pops) in a turn preparing for war in a city, the other can make 114 Archers in the same turn with the same industry if they have the pop (which with exploiting the current pop formula you can feasibly do), or they can just make 32 archers, trash the 4 redcoats in one turn and spend the rest on districts.

After all, if I was truly playing so suboptimally I'd have ran into some issue, any issues whatsoever, fighting the highest difficulty AI - which admittedly means nothing in these kinds of games, there is a huge gulf between beating that easily - and rushing science victory on turn 58 / 300 on normal speed as some people have done. Which comes down to... guess what... exploiting the game's formulas and how they work, or rather don't.

Yes, there are things wrong with a game that just released last month, things that should be fixed. And that's okay. That's what the forum is for, for pointing out your thoughts about the game. Not bashing on other players with your assumptions.

It appears there are to features that lead to this problem

1. The fairly high minimum damage

2. The Fact that ranged units don't suffer retaliation

#2 needs to change the most, because it also leads to the problem of "attacker wins"

So to solve the problem, First

When a unit attacks it will suffer retaliation from the unit it attacks, unless it is outside that units range.. Archer attacks a Spear directly adjacent to it (no cliff), Archer suffers damage (although without the -8)

For the Second.. the Additive nature of bonuses is good, but the damage result is a little Wonky... What I would Suggest

At 0 Difference: Min= 15, Max=30

For every point below(up til -10) -1 Min, -2 Max... so it gets to a 5-10 least damage done

For every point above (indefinitely, but more than 100 damage is useless), +4 Min, +5 Max (so at 14 its 71-100... and at 21 its 99-100, 22 is guaranteed kill.

Now those would still allow 20 Archers to kill anything... but you could kill all of them in the process as long as you were 22 Str higher or 41 (So an Arquebusier would get killed by 10-20 Archers but would kill all of them in the process)

Now Ranged still has a boost over melee with its longer range, but otherwise it should work fine.

Krikkitone wrote:

1. It appears there are two things that make the problem.  1. minimum damage is fairly high. 2. ranged units attack and don’t suffer retaliation. #2 is the important one to change.

There is like 10 things that make the problem sadly, all of them rooted in the formula behind CS to damage calculation and the modifiers to CS being flat rather than percentages - and the no retaliation thing is not one of the issues, since in a balanced formula, ranged units would both have relatively smaller Combat Strength than frontline ones to compensate for their skirmishing ability, and that fact would actually mean something. Currently it does not, and so Chariots attacking Archers on an open field for +15 CS and taking -5 CS worth of damage per hit, are going to die if both sides deploy an equal industry value in units onto said field, and that's if the Archers are just standing there - if they take defensible locations and use bottlenecks, its not even a contest.

So far the devs have been fixing the outcomes of the formula being deeply flawed, not the formula itself. They have established artificial damage floors that don't even follow their own formula, and recently added a notion of "anachronistic units" which limit the possible bounds of the damage range given by the formula depending on the tech difference between units. Both of those do not fix the cause, but attempt to bandaid the effects instead, and making units retaliate at range would be yet another such band-aid - not even an effective one, given how it would just make melee units even more useless, unless you'd want them to retaliate to longbows shooting at them from 4 squares away.

Bandaids will never fix the root cause even if twenty more such measures against specific circumstances were deployed - and if the formula were just changed, then all of the patchwork fixes would be redundant and could just be removed with no negative effects on warfare balance, not to mention that it'd make combat mechanics much less convulted and more intuitive to understand.

Kaerbear wrote:

Thanks for writing back - I see where our disconnect is. It's because the units don't shoot back (of course) and I was mentally not accounting for that. I think if we did the "Gunpowder units shoot back" change to combat (which is needed for other reasons) that would go a long way towards fixing this no? You'd go from needing 5 in your example to needing 20-25 per tank then. 

Sadly, no. It'd be yet another band-aid for the formula being flawed, that would just patchwork one hole to open another. I responded to this particular idea just a few minutes ago - there would be no need for that if the formula was actually properly balanced and worked, just as there would be no need to introduce the notion of "anachronistic units" getting limited to certain bounds within the range of damage given by the formula, or indeed to manually input artificial floors for damage that are not even in-line with said formula, both of which are things the devs did, instead of fixing the formula itself.

Notably, making units shoot back would open the following holes wide open:

- It would make melee units even more useless, since they can't retaliate to units firing at range, which ranged troops would now be able to do. They would have zero place in the game whatsoever, and they barely have any at the moment anyway. Unless you'd want them to retaliate at troops shooting at them from four tiles away, with their... clubs.

- It would make a difference of one in range absolutely crippling. For example, Longbowmen could pelt Crossbowmen with arrows with impunity, without receiving any retaliation damage whatsoever - and both of those are units unlock in the same era, on the same tech. Same goes for archers vs javelin throwers, and especially...

- Even if you just limit it to range 4 gunpowder units, first of all that makes every earlier unit instantly obsolete on unheard levels of uselessness the moment you field the first gunpowder unit. Rather than a curve of non gunner units slowly becoming weaker, they'd just jump down the cliff, pikeman, longbow, cavalry and horse, and never come out. Secondarily, it'd make it so that there can never be a real infantry unit with any other range than 4.

- What happens if one unit has line of sight on the other, and the other doesn't? This unbalances line of sight mechanics even more than they already are strained.

- In a situation where everything retaliates (or is useless), to try and avoid pitfalls, artillery would be the most overpowered unit ever, and battles would devolve into monostacks of range 8 artillery shooting at one another from their maximum range - after all, anything shorter range would be unable to retaliate against them, and like you said, needing to go from 5 units to beat a hugely superior quality enemy to 20-25 is pretty huge a difference. So there'd be no need nor point to use anything but artillery once that's unlocked.

Even ranged units retaliating to ranged ones within range would also feel weird - why can you only shoot once if you attack, yet then are attacked five times and somehow retaliate five times within the same round? No logic there, at least for melee units you can argue that they are in high intensity melee combat to justify that. That, plus combat animations would take twice as long to resolve.

As you can see - if you have a flawed formula and you try to patch one hole with a brute force attempt, five more open. Which is why you should not bandaid the outcomes, but rework the root cause, which for every issue in this thread is either the formula itself, or (comparatively speaking quite rarely) the fact that modifiers are flat, rather than percentage (and percentage ones would not work with the current formula either, so it comes back to the formula being flawed anyway).

Kaerbear wrote:

-Having ranged units fight back feeling weird is subjective, not objective - I don't think it's weird at all. Lots of games have this kind of fight back mechanic. The only reason it feels weird is because it wasn't first made that way. In my mind it works like this :

Melee - Can't shoot back from range.

Archers - Can't shoot back from range. Fights at melee with disadvantage.

Gunpowder (Gunner) - Can shoot back from range as well as melee with no disadvantage. 

Heavy Weapon - Can't retaliate at all.

But those are just my ideas. I still think that whatever they do needs to fit within the model they've made, as a retool is a bridge too far.

i like that idea, Gunners retaliate.... Possible make it so that Archers Don't retaliate, against Melee..

Early Game: 

Archer retaliate v. Archers ?and Gunners?

Melee retaliate v. Melee (and Gunners if in Range)

Late Game: 

Gunners retaliate v. Archers, Melee, Gunners (if in Range) 

Heavy Weapons never retaliate (or get retaliated against)

this is not as pathetic as civ6, but humankind (in a milder form) suffers the same incompetence than civ6, of archers being way too strong to not mostly build archers.

the main difference is, that amplitude still pretends to care for balancing, so there is hope for fixes.

Endless Legend does not have this "archers are just always better" problem, because some factions are more range focussed, and non-range focussed factions get other boni, that mostly equate the boon of archers of other factions.

civ6 is broken beyond repair, because all you need to do is to rush for archers, and make 50 archers, and 1 melee unit after the 3rd, 6th 10th and 20th arrcher.

you end up with 50 archers having captured half of the world before any AI player researched and constructed any city defenses (or enough ranged units).

this works better, if you never build any settler, and never build anything other than military; archers (and up to 4 melee unity to capture the emptied cities).

civ5 does not have this archer offense problem as much, because every city rather quickly acts like 1 free immobile ranged unit.

civ5 is still broken beyond repair, because building many small cities (and many cheap units) is ALWAYS better than building fewer cities with modern upgrades. because the EV-returnedValue of higher-tech city upgrades diminishes WAY more than just investing in happiness of many low tech (happy or revolting) cities instead.

Kaerbear wrote:
I think those are solvable problems, and honestly I'm not really sure how you'd rework the combat system now other than like redesigning the entire game. It's kind of a monumental task, wouldn't you say? It's not just how units fight, it's also how their strength is affected by other things (such as wonders, culture, buildings, etc). Not to mention Fortifications and terrain/adjacency bonuses. And who is to say what they come up with won't be worse? Especially given the lack of testing we're bound to get, any kind of retool like that would take months of work.

No, I wouldn't say so? It is literally a formula change. Its a simple, clean cut change, that unlike the current formula makes for predictable outcomes at every step of the way, and hence testing it is far less convulted. Plus, perhaps it hurts a little, but it would be pretty hard to come up with something that is worse than the current bandaged-up formula.

All you need to do is fix its glaring faults (while having examples on how to do it in every 4X game ever) - namely to find and use a formula that operates on the relative difference between the CS of units involved, rather than the flat one, and that has an even impact per percentage point of increase/decrease and does not run into damage caps and floors between units within any feasible range, so that said units actually have their damage dealt and taken change, and evenly so - for each % boost in combat strength above or below their base. Therefore making the impact of the stat always predictable, meaningful, and intuitive to understand. Which is funnily enough trivial to do.

And then switch modifiers (such as terrain, empire bonuses, fortifications etc) to become percentages - allowing them to affect each unit equally rather than being better the weaker the unit is (or even only impactful at all if it is weaker and only within a set range, like it is currently the case 90% of the time). All of this is exactly what a ratio-based formula, combined with %-based rather than flat modifiers does best. Indeed modifiers should have been %-based to begin with - and always are in these kind of games for a reason. In current HK however, they cannot be, as it uses a formula based on absolute, rather than relative difference in CS, which just breeds issues left and right, and the need for flat modifiers is but a minor one compared to some.

Months of work? Sorry, no. It is just a matter of translating the desired performance values of units and modifiers into sane ones based on an actually granular and working formula, which is all this thread is about, and which has been so thoroughly explained that I quite honestly lack the understanding how you could not understand it, other than if you haven't read through what was written at all. Feels like you came here with a preconceived notion, and when math happens to prove it faulty, you cheerfully say "its complicated and would take months of work so why not do more bandaids anyway!" while conveniently ignoring that it does not take months of work and is literally up there in your face.

By switching to a clear, granular, balanced and easy to understand formula, you make balancing extremely easy, because the values in combat strength actually proportionally reflect the power of each unit then. More often than not, they do not do so at the moment. Having more combat strength than you used to currently does nothing more often than it does something, and having less of it even more so.

Maybe bandaids shouldn't be used because they worsen the situation, they don't improve it. Let alone clear-cut and intuitive, the current formula is already incomprehensible after all the additions, and might as well be a range of arbitrarily, manually input values rather than a formula at all. And If you haven't noticed or having been paying attention, it is not a "monumental task". It is not "months of work" to fix that. It is honestly incredibly easy to do, if you ditch the root issue and actually start adressing the problem - the formula, rather than its many manifestations.

All I've seen so far is people trying to shove their favorite daily bandaid after bandaid of various shapes into a square shaped box, mutiliating the framework of the combat system evermore with every attempt - imagined, and actually implemented (in patches sadly). Those bandaids do not appear grounded in maths and fail to achieve true balance, while leaving players entirely without a clear and intuitive understanding of the formula behind combat. They feel rather like random attempts to fix something on a case to case basis, without understanding what it is that is truly broken and makes those cases pop up, or why, attempts that reject a simple truth of needing to fix the formula behind it all, that is at the moment full of arbitrary values and always was problematic even before it was made to be this way. I feel like a sunken cost fallacy is the only explanation on why the current formula looks like it does, on why it is so riddled with band-aids. But ripping it out by the roots like the eldritch monstrosity that it has become is something that will just... have to eventually happen. Or combat strength won't ever be a balanced nor intutively understood mechanic at all.

As for the rest of your post... okay, no.

No, melee units should not be obsolete from turn 0 of the game onwards, heck they really werent' until deep into the industrial era crossing into early contemporary, but what do I know. They were the bread and butter of warfare until the industrial age, with ranged units acting as mere support troops mostly, yet currently in game they are useless from ancient era onwards with very rare individual unit exceptions that never last more than an era.

No, the stat differences that you are talking about here do not matter one bit under the current formula. Because the current formula makes adjustments in unit stats largely pointless and extremely hard to calibrate between two units, let alone between the whole lineup of them, because current CS does not have an even impact per point, and sometimes lacks any impact at all for stretches of combat strength so wide that multiple eras worth of units do not cover them. And yes, you will win 4 archers against 4 warriors, and easily, in case you were wondering, on an open field, so long as there is any space to manuever or any terrain to make use of rather than the units bashing each other mindlessly stuck in place - just do the maths please, instead of giving out your opinions as if they were truth.

No, longbows killing crossbows with impunity would not be historically accurate. In fact, it was the other way around more ofen than not. And it is a singular example. And you just don't seem to understand the monumental issues which making retaliation happen at range would cause. You quote strength differences again - but those do not matter. In a world where ranged units can retaliate on one another there is only one stat that matters to any real degree under the current formula - superior range, the king of combat, and basically nothing else.

...I am tired of responding to this, with the same arguments over and over again that get skimmed over and through and not understood in favour of quick two sentence opinions, and I probably should cease to do so, because my responses are starting to look more like rants than actual constructive feedback, which I feel I have provided aplenty anyway.

Crunbum wrote:

Kaerbear wrote:

The problems of the Pangaea 10 player map aren't the same ones that the 2/1 continent split people have. I'm curious which they are balancing for!

That's actually a pretty good point (outside of warfare and general formulas where the differences would likely be little to none regardless of what you are balancing for). I think ultimately some civs will be pretty much unusable to anywhere near their full potential on some maps (like viking longships on pangea), whereas many others are definitely weaker with a New World setup than without as well. Ultimately I think the right approach is balancing each civ for its ideal situation, rather than trying to find a middle ground that doesn't exist.

With enough civs, eventually there will be one for every occassion, and in doing so true diversity may be achieved.

This is also a point I want to highlight. I see some youtubers from the CIV 5 community like to emphasis on the nonsense of the combat formula and combat forcast in HK, and complain that different cultures are not balanced. These are the people who look for the "perfect competitive MP platform". In this regard, they think HK is a total failure, and is just "a leisure game for amateur players".

But I always play the single player games, from CIV 2 to CIV 6. I see time and again how the alleged "re-balancing" for the sake of the MP games actually destroy a civilization that could be full of fun in the hands of the single player who just wants to try out different ways and styles of empire-building. Yes, you often get a lot of civs that are just, to say the least, boring for the single player games.

I tends to suggest the Amplitude Studios: when you do the "balancing" things, please consider the single player games first, and "how far they can push the HK". Those who want a "perfect competitive MP platform" also often have strong modding capabilities. Just make sure to give them the tools for modding, and they would bring about what they like.