c) Why does musketeers have 46 strength, line infantry 47 strength, and heavy machine gunners 50?

Doesn't this mean musketeers are basically nearly as combat effective as heavy machine gunners?!

That's in the wiki page, actually. https://humankind.fandom.com/wiki/Combat

1. Base damage at equal Strength Combat Strength is 20-25
2. Each point of difference increases the damage dealt by 5
3. Each points of difference also reduces the damage taken by 5
4. Minimum damage is 5-10

The combat was great and I feel that the first move advantage was nicely mitigated in this build. I did encounter a couple bugs with the combat though, as listed here:

• I captured a city and then enemy assaulted it. The problem is, even though I hold the city, the combat seems to work as if the enemy still has it, i.e. my cavalry can't attack enemy units within my walls, and enemy units gain combat strength while we're both in my walls. I think this is because even though I hold the city, the game forgot to count that as part of the combat.
• At some time in the early modern to industrial era, I lost my siege engines. I'm not sure if this is intended, but I am no longer able to build siege engines (shows up as "no siege engine unlocked" in the siege screen).
• There was a weird bug where I was in the middle of assaulting a city, and an enemy reinforcement came in and attacked me (not sortie). The game then froze on "awaiting enemy confirmation" on the combat screen.
• Zone of control was applied by units of a culture with whom I'm not at war. We allow skirmishes but it doesn't make sense for them to zone me while we're at peace.
• AI: While under a siege assault, the AI would send weaker units out of the walls to attack, effectively suiciding them. This shouldn't happen except in a sortie.

Ciabat wrote:

CristataC wrote:

I posted this question in the general forum, but want to add it into this more specific, beta combat thread:

-In this situation I am allied with purple, we have open borders. Orange comes and starts besieging her city. I have a nearby army and declare war on Orange.

However, I am unable to join in and lift the seige. I can not come in as a reinforcement, and there is no way to attack Oranges stack of older units, that I would likely wipe out.

The seige battle zone is even so large, it spreads into my territory and I can not walk around my own hexes. This was the worst part about combat I've found in this game. I find it limits the usefulness of alliances for military safety.

Two things that need to be changed for this:

-If my units can't join in as reinforcements (having 3 players in one fight). I should be able to enter the seige zone and attack Oranges units in a 1 on 1 battle.

-Siege zones need to be either limited to tiles in the actual zone of conflict, or atleast limited to tiles owned only by the person being attacked.

EDIT: Game 2 and here's another annoying example of a random siege I'm not involved in blocking movement in my territory. (Outlined my zone)

Guys THIS IS GAME BREAKING esp in multiplayer !!!!! 

please FIX IT before release, we dont want to players block others by some random battle nearby, rly they will rage quit the game

(the easiest way is just to allow move/build when in zone of combat of someone else battle)
I understand that we cannot do more than 1v1 fight but mechanic that could allow us somehow change the battle is really appreciated ! Like allies do often in history ;)

I completely agree. In multiplayer games this is bound to happen pretty often, and when late game battles scale to be "continent spanning" this could be really problematic. 

I would add that being able to have more than 1v1 in battles feels like an essential mechanic for multiplayer. Having your armies confined to just watch from the sidelines as your ally gets beaten in a battle right next to you feels like the wrong way to go about this. War against players who are ahead in these types of games almost always requires cooperation from those who are behind, and bottle necking those fights into 1v1s feels like it would just favor the player whose already ahead even more.

I'll admit to disappointment where combat was concerned.  Playing on the standard "Nation" setting I (the Assyrians) was consistently behind the other AI's, almost always at war with 2 or AI at any time, and they always seemed to include the Huns whose horse archers would destroy my armies even when I outnumbered them or had superior units - far as I can tell these guys suffer no penalties at all, even a river didn't seem to affect them.

Ebany wrote:

I'll admit to disappointment where combat was concerned.  Playing on the standard "Nation" setting I (the Assyrians) was consistently behind the other AI's, almost always at war with 2 or AI at any time, and they always seemed to include the Huns whose horse archers would destroy my armies even when I outnumbered them or had superior units - far as I can tell these guys suffer no penalties at all, even a river didn't seem to affect them.

IMO, Huns/Mongols are an issue.  They’re very difficult to deal with as a player against the AI, and in the hands of a human, they’re nigh unstoppable.  One issue does seem to be a lack of penalties.  I *think* the solution (after playing with the Huns/Mongols) is to reduce the number of units granted when spawning them via outposts to ONE. Being granted an army for 80 influence is insane.  Another solution, although it’s late in the development game for this, is creating subcategories of bowmen (long-, and short-).  Short-bowmen (such as Huns were, historically) would be unable to fire past city walls AT ALL.  This could alleviate some of the Hun/Mongol issue(s). 

Reinforcment is the biggest problem for me, and AI doesn't even abuse it too often. Wait till you get into multiplayer and the general tactic will be to stall entire armies with scouts. Someone wants to invade you? Do 1 scout to block the march of their entire army for a whole turn. Sacraficing one scout every turn to like basicaly prolong and stop the invasion will become a big problem. Why can't we have the Endless Legend system of reinforcement? I liked that one a lot.

Other then that, there are to little variety of units and they are too generic. The only good varied units are at classical era and culture special units. In classical era the choice between warriors, cavalry, archers anti-cavalry really feels important and allows for adjusting for counterplay and variety in army. After classical era the difference between general units feel way to insignificant. You just get your culture unit and archers/crossbowmen. In later eras it's even worse when the ranged units loose the close combat disadvantage trait, at that point there is no reason to not just use them and skip all the other units. Advancing the eras feels like the amount of units shrinks in choice, and it should either stay at 5-6 or expand. But right now it feels like over the eras it goes down from 5-6 in classical era, to 1-2 in early modern and beyond (talking only about land units, cannot really test naval gameplay again on this map). I feel like general units need not more strength but some traits over the eras to make them useful in different situations. Right now they don't feel like having much of it. Like right now even cavalry doesn't work against crossbowmen, because they retaliate with almost the same strength, so maybe just introduce anti-range trait for them at some point (partially it is a problem of the technology tree also but about that elsewhere) I think ranged units shouldn't pose zone of control at all. Maybe on strategic map as well if the whole army is composed only out of them. That would make some interesting choices. Just make more traits that differentiate the units.

Terrain bonuses feel to make too much of a difference. I like that they are there, but they feel a bit too powerful. On the other hand it makes the battles interesting because you actively need to mind them all the time, so maybe they are fine that way, makes the combat deeper and harder. It's hard here.

I like the battles in the game overall.

The-Cat-o-Nine-Tales wrote:
Armies now do not lose their movement points if the enemy retreats to prevent frustrations of multiple armies getting tied up by a fight that did not actually happen.

and now we should all look at the other side of the coin.

this makes retreating almost useless now that the attackers can close in even faster. i retreated from a hopeless fight only to be attacked by the same army in the same turn.
besides, you should be able to decide for yourself where to retreat to. often enough, my units simply fled into the enemy territory, and i just thought to myself, you can't be serious.

I really enjoy combat. The different levels of high ground and battles make everything feel tactical. However, there are definitelty some issues.

There are some major issues with controls, but I already mentioned them in this thread so I won't go over them again.

Garrisons are nice, but it's not entirely clear what their purpose is supposed to be. Are they supposed to be defensive structures placed on strategic high ground?  Or are they better on lower ground to block of a chokepoint. They have health stats, but to use them you need to have units in the district. I liked using them, but the purpose isn't exactly clear and seems that blocking of chokepoints is better than getting the high ground. Perhaps some boost to the bonuses, or give increased bonuses to fortifcations and high ground. I feel garrisons could be buffed a bit.

I have to agree with others: Gunners need more penalties. Attacking from a range is strong, so a close up penalty is fair. But only archers and specialty units face this penalty. Having little penalties for ranged units is problematic. Perhaps while in fortifications, ranged units don't have the close up penalty.

Furthermore, the rock paper scissors element needs be stronger. Anti-calvary units aren't strong enough against calvary, so they don't work that way. They could be buffed in strength, but then they compete more with melee units and would likely need some penalty that makes them useless. Instead, why not make anti-calvary units have additional bonuses to the defense with either a bonus when attacked or increased friendly unit bonuses. Calvary could be strong by having the mobility and offensive bonuses and good for dealing with ranged units. Melee units could be weaker on the defense compared to anti-cav, but stronger on the offense, making them decent generalist units. I think the calvary penalties against fortifications is good, and it could be a bit more pronounced.

Speaking of rock paper scissors, naval units seem weak. They are certianly stronger than embarked units, but they don't seem strong enough. There doesn't seem to be an embarked penalty, so all though naval units are decent at dealing with embarked units, they certianly aren't strong as they should be.

Additionally, some terrain bonuses don't makes sense. Why the river penalties on the defense? Sure crossing the river makes sense to have a penalty, but on the defense it should benefit. Are we supposed to think the units are straddling the river, waiting to get picked of one by one? Also, high ground bonuses only seem to happen once. It doesn't scale with a larger height difference, which doesn't make to much sense. Perhaps it could have diminishing returns, just so it's not to overpowered, but it needs to make a little more sense.

Reinforcements are cool, but they don't seem clearly communicated and a little confusing. Why only one additional unit per turn?

Before I get to my main issue in combat, I'd like to echo some issues others have had. Line of sight seems to be confusing for many players, and later units feel all the same as they are all gunners.

My main issue in combat is the hunnic hordes. In fact, it even made me rage quit from how fustrating it is. I'll paint the picture, with this being on nation difficulty.

As I was beginning to fight a 2 front war, I needed to produce more units to defend my lands as my main fighting forces were away. Two hunnic hordes are laying seige to my cities and my reenforcements arrive to assist the citizens fight back. One sortie goes well. The hunnic horde was positioned on a river, so the citizens and lone crossbowman was able to inflict enough damage. Having medieval era tech from my science focus, I beat them back, although they were able to inflict decent damage. The second sortie was tougher. The horde had the high ground, so I had an uphill battle. I was poorly positioned, but with some reinforcements, focus fire and gaining some high ground, I fought them back, but with heavily damaged units. Eager to continue the war, I group up and head towards the border where enemies were spotted.

I had the foresight to position a garrison on top of high ground next to a chokepoint where the enemy would need to climb up a cliff. With my anti-calvary and several ranged crossbowmen, I was ready to hold here. I attack the army in the chokepoint and take advantage of the one or two enemy spawn spots. I focus fire and take the flag. Now it's time to hold. Quickly, the horde rides up to the cliff side, fires attack my crossbowmen and rides of. They keep doing this. They keep doing this. I look over, and see the enemy army is 17 units, all of which can ride in, attack, ride of so another horde can attack. My units by the cliff are weak and battered, and they had to fall back. I couldn't last long, and if it weren't for the fact I held the flag, I would have been routed. I had every advantage: high ground, a chokepoint, a garrison and more advanced units. Despite this, I barely scraped by. Sure they greatly outnumbered me. But should an AI have triple my army's units on Nation difficulty after I already killed 8 of their units in previous abilities?

Unfortunately, this was only the beginning. Due to heavy damage and some other units that slipped by, I made a bad descision and moved my army back. The horde slipped by and began to assualt my city. Here was the real rage enducing battle. I had stone walls around a developed city, and a crossbowman to poke the enemy. But the enemy outnumbered me. A trebuchet smashed my walls, and the horde surrounded my units inside the walls, weaking them greatly. There was no way I could defeat 18 units.

So clearly the hordes are powerful. There are several issues.

The first issue is how easily they multiply. This exacerbates their issues by causing you to face a massive horde which plays to their strengths and makes them a threat well after the classical era. I don't think the concept of this is too bad. It makes sense for a nomadic unit to grow from attacking and pillaging. The best solution for this issue is to turn it down. If it takes longer for them to produce a new unit, it will take longer for them to amass a massive army they can throw at the enemy. My only fear is either this change won't nerf them, or will overly nerf them into being useless.

The next issue is the hit and run. Now this isn't inheretly bad. Hit and run tactics makes sense for the unit and is pretty cool. But it is strong. It prevents you from effectively punish units, and allows the horde to run in attack, and get another unit in place to attack. If they get enough units, they can keep attacking a single unit until they are dead or uselessly weak. And they can get enough units. Units that can keep attacking and can't be punished. It's definitely strong, but it can't be directly nerfed without making the units lose their identity.

Here's the big issue. The concept of the unit is good, but it's strong. It makes sense the hordes should be somewhat unstoppable, but they need to have some weakness. Getting rid of their strengths leaves you with a boring, usless unit.

Here is my suggestion: Make them weak to fortifications. Currently, calvary's big weakness is that they can't attack fortifcations. However, the hordes, being ranged, don't have this weakness. If we make them unable to (Or at least have a strong combat penalty) against attacking fortifications and double height high ground (The difference you can't travel between directly between) they would have a strong weakness while being powerful. Their ability to multiply will still need to be adjusted, but they would be far more balanced. Think of them as calvary who don't take damage on the offense. They would be strong in open flat land, or attacking from the high ground. But going directly against fortifications or a cliffside, is thier weakness. They remain the terror the horde should be, but they have a weakness players can exploit and work around. The defender can guard high ground and chokepoints, and place fortifcations, while the huns can try to take them out in the open plains. They do still have the issue of being quite strong when they are at the advantage, but I think it's a fair trade off.

I find the combat really interesting and i enjoy to make plan where to start a fight to take advantage of the terrain. I love the reinforcement mechanic also. But :

- The mongol horde is way OP actually. Move and fire and ignore zone of control is too much.

- The battle between 2 civs in another civ territory with Fortification is realy hard to figure out, especialy with cavalry which can not pass through

- Line of sight a really hard to figure out

- There is no mention of what type of siege weapon you need to build against what type of fortification. I was besieging a city and i could not build any siege weapon even if i had the trebuchet unlocked => maybe a bug ?

- The attacking army should have a flag to defend also.

Thanks !

The hordes are really problematic. I won't repeat the issue I mentioned before, but they have massive numbers, even on Nation. The only way to deal with them is to set up garrisons to block of all their movement, but production is slow so you are forced to kill of your pop just to have that. If you have advanced tech and equal numbers, you can deal with them. But you rarely have equal numbers. If you can split them up with garrison, you might have a chance. But even after taking out several armies, they still can come at you with 20 units. Then you have to attack them and hope that you can take them out in one round before reinforcements spawn, because if you can't you'll get swarmed and lose.

The strength of better units supply by the ages is too high
as an example a just trained swordsman should have the same basic strength as a fully trained warrior (veteran 3) and not be able to take on almost two warriors at the same time.

this is most noticeable on the Humankind difficulty level. even by making the best use of strength bonuses and outnumbering my units, they received more damage than they dealt. And that was with only one enemy unit that was surrounded and attacked by the high one that had other allies standing all around it.

The-Cat-o-Nine-Tales wrote:
Bigger changes to address the increasing "first move advantage" of the attacker with the rise of gunpowder infantry are in the works, but we're not ready to talk about those yet.

We also need a basic defense bonus for the first round of combat.
something like " prepared " for the fight. which would give +3 strength in the round.
or only +2 since they also have the defending bonus in the round i think.

TheGreatestDrMcJenkins wrote:

Furthermore, the rock paper scissors element needs be stronger. Anti-calvary units aren't strong enough against calvary, so they don't work that way. They could be buffed in strength, but then they compete more with melee units and would likely need some penalty that makes them useless. 

Anti-Cavalry is substantially cheaper than Cavalry, while still having the same amount of Combat Strength. A Spearman has only 1 less Combat Strength for half the price of a Horseman, and it'd even be going against a Unit that's an Era ahead. Pikemen have the same Combat Strength as Knights, while being four times cheaper. If you compare two Spearmen against a single Horseman, then the Spearmen will win. If a person spamming Anti-Cavalry fought against a person spamming Cavalry, the Anti-Cavalry player would easily win. 

TheGreatestDrMcJenkins wrote:

Reinforcements are cool, but they don't seem clearly communicated and a little confusing. Why only one additional unit per turn?

I'm fairly certain that you can reinforce multiple Units in a turn. Just make sure that there aren't any Units that are standing on the Reinforcement point - move them out of the way before attacking, and another Unit should appear.

TheGreatestDrMcJenkins wrote:

My main issue in combat is the hunnic hordes. In fact, it even made me rage quit from how fustrating it is. I'll paint the picture, with this being on nation difficulty.

As I was beginning to fight a 2 front war, I needed to produce more units to defend my lands as my main fighting forces were away. Two hunnic hordes are laying seige to my cities and my reenforcements arrive to assist the citizens fight back. One sortie goes well. The hunnic horde was positioned on a river, so the citizens and lone crossbowman was able to inflict enough damage. Having medieval era tech from my science focus, I beat them back, although they were able to inflict decent damage. The second sortie was tougher. The horde had the high ground, so I had an uphill battle. I was poorly positioned, but with some reinforcements, focus fire and gaining some high ground, I fought them back, but with heavily damaged units. Eager to continue the war, I group up and head towards the border where enemies were spotted.

I had the foresight to position a garrison on top of high ground next to a chokepoint where the enemy would need to climb up a cliff. With my anti-calvary and several ranged crossbowmen, I was ready to hold here. I attack the army in the chokepoint and take advantage of the one or two enemy spawn spots. I focus fire and take the flag. Now it's time to hold. Quickly, the horde rides up to the cliff side, fires attack my crossbowmen and rides of. They keep doing this. They keep doing this. I look over, and see the enemy army is 17 units, all of which can ride in, attack, ride of so another horde can attack. My units by the cliff are weak and battered, and they had to fall back. I couldn't last long, and if it weren't for the fact I held the flag, I would have been routed. I had every advantage: high ground, a chokepoint, a garrison and more advanced units. Despite this, I barely scraped by. Sure they greatly outnumbered me. But should an AI have triple my army's units on Nation difficulty after I already killed 8 of their units in previous abilities?

Unfortunately, this was only the beginning. Due to heavy damage and some other units that slipped by, I made a bad descision and moved my army back. The horde slipped by and began to assualt my city. Here was the real rage enducing battle. I had stone walls around a developed city, and a crossbowman to poke the enemy. But the enemy outnumbered me. A trebuchet smashed my walls, and the horde surrounded my units inside the walls, weaking them greatly. There was no way I could defeat 18 units.

So clearly the hordes are powerful. There are several issues.

The first issue is how easily they multiply. This exacerbates their issues by causing you to face a massive horde which plays to their strengths and makes them a threat well after the classical era. I don't think the concept of this is too bad. It makes sense for a nomadic unit to grow from attacking and pillaging. The best solution for this issue is to turn it down. If it takes longer for them to produce a new unit, it will take longer for them to amass a massive army they can throw at the enemy. My only fear is either this change won't nerf them, or will overly nerf them into being useless.

The next issue is the hit and run. Now this isn't inheretly bad. Hit and run tactics makes sense for the unit and is pretty cool. But it is strong. It prevents you from effectively punish units, and allows the horde to run in attack, and get another unit in place to attack. If they get enough units, they can keep attacking a single unit until they are dead or uselessly weak. And they can get enough units. Units that can keep attacking and can't be punished. It's definitely strong, but it can't be directly nerfed without making the units lose their identity.

Here's the big issue. The concept of the unit is good, but it's strong. It makes sense the hordes should be somewhat unstoppable, but they need to have some weakness. Getting rid of their strengths leaves you with a boring, usless unit.

Here is my suggestion: Make them weak to fortifications. Currently, calvary's big weakness is that they can't attack fortifcations. However, the hordes, being ranged, don't have this weakness. If we make them unable to (Or at least have a strong combat penalty) against attacking fortifications and double height high ground (The difference you can't travel between directly between) they would have a strong weakness while being powerful. Their ability to multiply will still need to be adjusted, but they would be far more balanced. Think of them as calvary who don't take damage on the offense. They would be strong in open flat land, or attacking from the high ground. But going directly against fortifications or a cliffside, is thier weakness. They remain the terror the horde should be, but they have a weakness players can exploit and work around. The defender can guard high ground and chokepoints, and place fortifcations, while the huns can try to take them out in the open plains. They do still have the issue of being quite strong when they are at the advantage, but I think it's a fair trade off.

Some notes on the Hordes:

The Huns have zero economic bonuses. Indeed, because of their inability to attach Outposts, they have economic maluses. The Huns are naturally a gamble - if you attempt to attack somebody with the Hordes and fail, then you're going to fall behind and lose since you just lost out on a full era of development. As such, I think that it could be fair that the Huns could be more powerful than average in war, since they're much weaker than average in their economy. 

The Huns are weak to Fortifications. They have a range of one. That means that if you place your Units two tiles away, they can't attack you. For example, if you surround your City with Districts and place a Crossbowman in the middle, then they can shoot at the Hordes without the Hordes being able to do anything. If you let the AI get a Trebuchet and destroy your walls, then that's obviously a problem. However, you can launch a Sortie before they get a Trebuchet. 

Increasing the Combat Strength differences when the Hordes attack Fortifications/High Ground doesn't help. IIRC, if the Hordes attack a Crossbowman in Fortifications, the Combat Strength difference is that they'll deal minimum damage. However, minimum damage is quite high - it ranges from 5 to 25 damage. If you increase the Combat Strength differences, the Hordes will continue to deal that minimum damage. The suggestion should be to reduce the maximum amount of the minimum damage.