Sublustris wrote:

I like the changes, although regular cavalry feels very weak, and anti-cavalry too strong with no obvious downsides.

The true benefit of cavalry is on the strategic map, rather than on the battlefield.  I'm okay with them being mostly sub-par with situational value on the battlefield (running down damaged enemy units, outflanking, the occasional charge bonus against melee or archer units).  The extra movement points on the main map is worth it. 

Hi there,

Didn't read the whole thread. Played Victor twice. Hard 4X nerd (CIV 1 to 6, all endless franchise, Master of Orion 2 ultra-fan).

Here is my feedback on the combat:

1. Should the “Friendly Units” bonus not be about how many allied troops are adjacent to the enemy unit instead of adjacent to the acting unit (thus receiving bonus from the unit on her back)? 
2. It seems that ranged units have a malus for shooting across rivers...

1. (Three, Sir) There are serious problems with the retreat mechanism:

In the same problematic of reserve armies being blocked for the turn, the AI came here with one cheap unit (red E), and managed to block 3 big and advanced armies as one of them had to engage combat, ending the turn of all 3 armies (there was no combat since the decoy AI army fled)…

This will be a very unfair tactic in MP games if it stays as is...

In this last example, retreat gave the enemy unit an additional move (M+R):

Wow, I never saw that penalty for shooting ACROSS a river, really hope it gets fixed now. Good find

TravlingCanuck wrote:

Sublustris wrote:

I like the changes, although regular cavalry feels very weak, and anti-cavalry too strong with no obvious downsides.

The true benefit of cavalry is on the strategic map, rather than on the battlefield.  I'm okay with them being mostly sub-par with situational value on the battlefield (running down damaged enemy units, outflanking, the occasional charge bonus against melee or archer units).  The extra movement points on the main map is worth it. 

Except they don't have charge bonus, unlike heavy cavalry.

Laliloluhla wrote:

Wow, I never saw that penalty for shooting ACROSS a river, really hope it gets fixed now. Good find

Unless I'm misreading, I believe the penalty is because the Archer unit is standing on a river tile - the head of a river, to be precise.  It is a little hard to tell, but I haven't seen a penalty for shooting across a river, so I think that's the most likely explanation, but maybe I've just not noticed the across-river shooting penalty before.

TravlingCanuck wrote:

Laliloluhla wrote:

Wow, I never saw that penalty for shooting ACROSS a river, really hope it gets fixed now. Good find

Unless I'm misreading, I believe the penalty is because the Archer unit is standing on a river tile - the head of a river, to be precise.  It is a little hard to tell, but I haven't seen a penalty for shooting across a river, so I think that's the most likely explanation, but maybe I've just not noticed the across-river shooting penalty before.

Oh yeah you're right, it is cause he's standing on a river, false alarm. I now get what people mean when they say the terrain is hard to read.

@Monger

2. 1 It's true that some units do get replaced too quickly, I think spearmen should be better than warriors since they cost copper but they're too good for their cost.I'd have warriors cost a bit less production, give spearmen 19 CS instead of 20 and lower their anti-cavalry bonus to +3. Swordsmen are only +8 CS compared to the last era upgrade (warrior), not that bad of a jump compared to other units, maybe it'd be a good idea lowering them to 24. Remember they cost more production and need iron to build.

2. 2 I'm fine with there not being a classical era archer upgrade since they're still strong even into the classical age, spearmen are another story but their combat difference isn't so bad they're completely outclassed. I think as a compromise swordsmen should be fairly more expensive to build, not so much that you're better off fielding spearmen even when you unlock swordsmen, but enough so that those without access to iron at least have a fighting chance.
  

(This is where your numbering gets odd so please forgive me)

2.3 Yeah as time goes on I'm starting to notice that is the case. The second the medieval hits eras become wider and wider gaps. I don't like it either and think eras after the classical need their CS rate lowered. Great swordsmen are 10CS higher compared to swordsmen, and halberds were 10CS compared to pikemen, meanwhile compare the 4CS difference between chariots and horsemen, or 8CS difference between warriors and swordsmen. Of course emblematic units need to be changed to fit all these changes and I hope they do just that.

2.4 I'm largely okay with gunner on crossbows or arquebusiers, your suggestion would be good since they are generic units and thus could receive a second trait meaning they need line of sight. Personally I'd be okay with just lowering their CS, crossbows especially, I beat the entire medieval era using nothing but them.

2.5 the issue with siege is defender ai and sieges not providing enough fortifications to deter assaults on the first turn. You can chop down trees while sieging to instantly build all siege weapons (which is OP). I think siege weapons should be created faster, defenders should die quicker, ai should defend better by not running their troops out, and fortifications should be more protective. Also I'd reign in the bonus for chopping, lower the time it takes to perform to 3 or 2 turns, but only have it fill up one siege bar instead of all of them.

2.6 Retreating sucks because the AI tends to spread out their units into hundreds of different armies, and these armies ignore terrain penalties when they retreat. Addressing both of these issues would make retreating much less annoying, as well as not removing all army movement in the area addition to the one you wanted to attack with.

2.7 Would be great if pressing retreat allowed you to chose exactly where to move your army in their movement range, it would be as simple as regularly moving. A+ to that idea.

2.8 That's called having your troops run away while the timer runs out. I prefer this over having a dedicated retreat button in combat, it's more accurate having to order your troops to move back and wait for the battle is over.

2.9 Bringing back generals would be cool for other reasons but I don't want to introduce a strict army cap. I'd rather have reinforcements be unable to act on the turn they arrive so that it's more effective keeping troops in one stack. Everyone should know by now how important one turn can be in humankind.

2.10 I could see it becoming a thing for all expansionist cultures, getting the ability to loot battles, they could certainly use the help but I've been brainstorming other methods of giving them resource bonuses. Also the spanish conquistador has that exact trait and gets money from each battle. Coincidentally spanish are expansionist.

2.11 Disagree with the speed rating idea. Fixing the Attacker/Defender issue is much simpler than that. First is giving defenders more options for putting their soldiers so they can start the fight in a better place. Fixing the damage formula so defense is more useful is the next thing to change since minimum damage attacks still deal so much damage. Finally if all that doesn't work increase the bonus for defending on the first turn to 2 instead of 1 as well.

2.12 Yeah I hope they fix that, really annoying

2.13 The problem with naval units isn't their variety, although one more ship in the medieval era wouldn't hurt, the problem is in the next point you discuss.

2.14 Naval units being unable to interact with much right now is a real problem. The new limit on the amount of harbors cities can have means less chances to raid, on top of raiding being worse. I'd also have ships able to siege cities. (Not immediately though so people can't permanently siege cities in the ancient era. I say make a separate class of ship just for the ancient era that can't siege, then all the rest can). Ships also aren't really that slow, just transports which is the issue, if units could be ferried by dedicated ships and not just the embarking ships that'd solve a lot of issues people have with speed. I do think navigator adds too many turns a ship can stay out on sea, and should be lowered to 4 turns (5 if we include the turn the ship enters open sea). I'm indifferent to ships creating outposts, if units could ride ships then this ability wouldn't be needed.

@Laliloluhla 

My numbering got weird because I copy pasted from a word document, and then tried fixing it in the comments here bt clearly wasn't formatting it very well. As you may have seen, I changed them all to dots between posting my original comment and your reply! 

So, I won't respond to all your points, but I will use your numbering system, haha.

2.1  I agree that as things stand that Spearmen should be better because they cost a resource that Warriors don't. If I were to elaborate further I would also say that I think Spearmen should be unlocked with City Defense and Warriors should unlock with Bronze-Working and require a copper deposit, especially because many Warrior varieties appear to be wielding swords or axes, and spears are by far the simpler technology. It would allow you to get an upgrade in the form of Warriors while still leaving a niche for Spearmen in case the enemy tries to overrun you with chariots or whatnot. While I disagree that +8 isn't a big jump in CS, if Spearmen had a CS of 17, and Warriors a CS of 20 for instance, it would be less of a jump already.

2.4  Your experience does kind of prove my point though! I think lowering their CS could definitely be an option, but at least thematically it also feels weird to me that they'd get Gunner (even ignoring the implications of weapon type in that word for Crossbowmen).

2.5  I never tried the trick with chopping down tree to build siege equipment! Didn't know it worked that well. I agree with all your points though. I only ever had a battering ram or two when I attacked with them because I got sick of waiting, so in that context I would still say that their CS is a bit too low. It's not like they can hurt enemy units anyway, so I don't see the harm in raising their CS to make them more effective against walls. That balance definitely gets tricky with ballista and trebuchet though, as they can easily harm enemy units.

2.9  To be fair, my suggestion doesn't introduce a strict army cap of any kind. To clarify, with my suggestion you can still have a full stack of units without a general, but only an army with a general has the structure and discipline to reinforce other armies on the field. I do think your suggestion could work too though, because it sounds like we can at least both agree that the way things work right now... well, isn't working.

2.10  As far as the Conquistador is concerned, I am aware they have that ability, and I would definitely think it could easily be reworked into such a system to provide bonus gold on a victory.

2.11  It is a little convoluted and would certainly be hard to implement. I still like it, but it definitely has its flaws. I do think that increasing the bonus to defending on the first turn to 2 instead of 1 could be a much more elegant solution. I'd love to see that tested and see if it helps.

(I'll respond to your points on naval combat, but I edited my original points out and moved them to the naval thread. Thought I'd get away with it because I didn't think anyone would read my post before I edited it! haha)

2.13  I don't think there's a problem with variety right now, because there are much bigger issues with naval units that absolutely need to be addressed. If those issues are addressed though, and we're at sea more often, I do think that naval combat is going to be pretty bland in the Ancient-Medieval without a little ship variety.

2.14  I personally would rather see units be able to ride along with other ships too. I think it would be preferable to just plopping off the coast anywhere you want and BAM there's a ship there (yes, you can rationalize it in a number of ways, but I still don't much care for it). I'm curious, for your idea of ships that can siege, would they spawn a unit of Marines on the coast or something? I'm indifferent to them creating outposts, and in fact, the more I think about it, the more I think it's a bad idea, but they definitely need more options than they have now.

First of all, the combat feels way better that it was in he Lucy, and if damage balance isn't perfect yet it is close to it. But, there are still some problems that I want to talk about.

1) Difficulty: I've played on empire and humankind difficulty and haven't experienced any challenge, even though I'm not that good at warfare (in Civilization6 I struggle at emperor difficulty). In fact the only difference I've noticed on the last difficulty is +2 might modifier instead of +1.

2) Battles are too fast: In two playthroughs I could count only few battles that lasted for more than one turn and in those cases I was just finishing my enemy instead of actually fighting. However I don't think it is ruining fun, fast sieges on he other hand is. In my second playthrough(Humankind difficulty) I decided to wage wars my entire game from ancient to industrial era, and I had only one siege that lasted for over 1 turn.

3) Siege weapons: Since it is so easy to take a city in one turn - making rams or trebuchets isn't even pointless but it is harmful for your success. Ability to take a city in one turn is so strong because you don't let the enemy to bring reinforcements and if you wait for siege weapons to be made you will only loose your advantage.

4) Wars are too fast: As a conclusion from second point I can say that it isn't rare when a result of the war is decided in the first turn and you just have to wait for 4 more turns just to be able to send peace proposal. And it is true for both early game (because enemy has 1-2 cities) and late game (because enemy falls behind you in technology so much).

5) I'm not sure if this is a bug or a feature, but when enemy looses the war they tend to convert every pop into units as a result you can get a city with just one pop in turn 120+.

@Monger I really like the suggestion that armies require a General in order to reinforce.  That should help mitigate the weakened value of army slots given how reinforcements now work.  This could be a feasible change, work-load wise pre launch, as the code for Generals no doubt still exists in the game.  All that might be required would be to add a new check to the existing check for whether the reinforcing tech is known - if an army has a General, then it can reinforce, otherwise, it gets locked out of the battle just as it would be before the reinforcing tech is researched.

@TravlingCanuck Yah, thinking that the codes for generals are still in there made me think this would be pretty doable.

That said, I think @Laliloluhla brings up some valid concerns with how this would be implemented, especially concerning reinforcing a besieged city, which issomething that I hadn't really thought of before. Though I think your suggestions might help patch up some of the holes in my idea.

I also understand that a lot of my ideas and preferences might be just that, my preferences, and might not be things that other players want to deal with. So some of this is not stuff I expect to be implemented, but are definitely things I would toy around with in mods. Of course, it's also very easy to sit around and theory-craft all day long, but until the game is finished and we're able to make mods to try out any of our ideas not implemented by Amplitude, it is really hard to gauge how they will affect the game.

The new damage formula feels better

One thing that annoyed me is that you lsoe movement after interacting with an other army

It make sens afte a battle but is very annoying when the ennemy retreat, especially when your 4 units army attacks the neighbouring 1 unit that retreat and you lose the whole turn

I think it would be better that you only lose movement after a battle, not if the ennemy retreat

Also Im" not sure it is a problem but I was surprised to see attacking in itslef doesnt take movement, you can still engage a neighbourign army with 0 movement

They could easily allow movement points to be affected by terrain during retreats.

More importantly I want to be able to chose where to retreat to. Bring up the movement menu after I chose "retreat", let me click exactly where I want my retreating army to go as if it was any other movement command.

Just want to say I also do like the new damage charts too. Muct better than Lucy build where high strength units can overwhelm weaker units with ease resulting in one side massacre.

Having said that, I do wish the maximum damage done by weaker units could be slightly smaller or tighter in range like only about 5-20% rather than 5-25% against significantly higher strength units. But otherwise, they are still fine overall.

Add Disband and Instant Heal option to Group UI

This is what I really wish to see for easier management of units or quality of life improvement. It is tedious going to each individual unit in a stack and select instant heal them with money one by one. Same applies to disbanding each unit too.

The other thing I would like to being able to select 2+ units in a stack for transfering to another hex/stack. I do not really like how we also have to all these individually sometimes.

The AI is good at making units but might need adjusting a bit. It's one thing to field a huge army at war. But it seems like their economy must be going down to nothing. You can check the post-game graphs and there seems to be a bit of an indication that they never disband units to re-integrate civilians into their cities. 

I experienced some issues with battles stretching over several turns:

- When you are in the situation of Blücher arriving late on the battlefield of Waterloo, you currently cannot join the battle. Depending on what is programmable, it would be great either to join the battle opposing your ally and your enemy or to lend your army to your ally to reinforce it against your ennemy.

- When you were involved in a fight and your opponent yield to your allies and become their vassal, the fight does not stop. It continues but you only can attack with distance weapons. These are 2 consecutive bugs. Ideally the fight should stop by a defeat of the new vassal.