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Archers and spears dominate early you say? Sounds about right. Cavalry are designed specifically to murder those archers that dominate the early game. That's why they have high movement, to get AROUND the spears. Also good for finishing off wounded units and pillaging the crap out of the countryside. Also great for scouting to set up and avoid ambushed. That's why they can take +1 vision as their first upgrade. Swordsmen do seem like an odd man out. Unless you have a UU swordsman/longswordsman or were just going that way on the tech tree first, they seem sorta like a waste of time. What really annoys me about units in this game are ones who lose previous promotions when they upgrade. Horse archers with ranged upgrades become terrible Knights!
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Jul 26, 2013 02:42
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Modding in +% vs infantry for Swordsmen and possibly adding ranged resistance to Swordsmen or siege seems like it'd be super easy to mod I wonder if it'd be possible to add a Cover style upgrade as a default upgrade for siege that applied to archer units but not city attacks
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Jul 26, 2013 02:43
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The real counter to spearmen? Nukes.
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Jul 26, 2013 02:46
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Pvt.Scott posted:Cavalry are designed specifically to murder those archers that dominate the early game. That's why they have high movement, to get AROUND the spears. Also good for finishing off wounded units and pillaging the crap out of the countryside. Also great for scouting to set up and avoid ambushed. That's why they can take +1 vision as their first upgrade. This would work except for 2 things, mounted units still have the malus vs cities and don't get terrain bonuses to defense which means they get torn apart by massed archer/city attacks. If I can get 10 units out for my first war there's no reason to waste my time building a horse, spears are better for staying alive to take cities and the best counter to archers is more archers.
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Jul 26, 2013 02:51
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Pvt.Scott posted:Archers and spears dominate early you say? Sounds about right. Any hills or marshes pretty much kill that counter though but horse archers losing their upgrades could be changed seeing as Impi's upgrade into Infantrymen and not Lancers.
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Jul 26, 2013 02:52
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Pvt.Scott posted:The real counter to spearmen? Nukes. I always seem to have an ancient era unit hanging around by the end of the game. I should micro more.
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Jul 26, 2013 02:52
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Pvt.Scott posted:Archers and spears dominate early you say? Sounds about right. I'm not being lovely, I'm genuinely curious if this is actually a regular feature of your gameplay? My experience is usually that by the time I can wheel horses around to the flank, the fight is effecitvely over. Either I've already won or my units are all dead and the horses just get peppered with arrows. I have managed to wreak havok a few times, but imo horses don't get -enough- movement. They ought to be able to move after attacking no matter how far they went before attacking, or at least ignore rough terrain. Typically what happens is my horse gets to a hill, is forced to stop, and gets murdered before it can do anything useful.
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Jul 26, 2013 02:52
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Mounted units in general just feel like a waste of time, other than maybe 1 to have sentry promotions for better visibility.
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Jul 26, 2013 02:55
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Sometimes I build swords over pikes because I know all those pikes are going to fall into the lancer pit as technology progresses and I would rather keep a unit that I know will be useful all the way into the future. Any remaining pikes at the industrial age I phase out, disbanding each as I build a new rifle to replace it.
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Jul 26, 2013 02:58
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TacMan posted:Mounted units in general just feel like a waste of time, other than maybe 1 to have sentry promotions for better visibility. The only use i can find for them is to pillage the poo poo out of backline cities. They're worthless for winning battles because fronts are so small, but they can win you long wars, sherman-style. Of course this also means there's no real point in upgrading horsemen to anything better.
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Jul 26, 2013 02:59
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On another note, I did some Steam Workshop browsing earlier and when I got to the landmines mod, I closed my browser in disgust. A tile improvement that deals massive damage to the unit that sets it off and good splash damage to adjacent units? loving LANDMINES DO NOT WORK THAT WAY! Sure, a minefield or booby trap will cause the occasional casualty, but their strategic use is for area denial and wasting your opponent's time and resources clearing them. E: I will concede that cavalry in Civ V is 99% of the time a gigantic waste of resources that could be used elsewhere. A boy can dream though. Pvt.Scott fucked around with this message at 03:03 on Jul 26, 2013 |
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Jul 26, 2013 03:00
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Tulip posted:The only use i can find for them is to pillage the poo poo out of backline cities. They're worthless for winning battles because fronts are so small, but they can win you long wars, sherman-style. Of course this also means there's no real point in upgrading horsemen to anything better. Keep em waiting in the wings while your archers rain hellfire on an enemy city, then swoop in and take it while it has 1hp left. I've never had a unit fail to take a city when it didn't have any health remaining. I have to say also, the way terrain works in Civ also hampers the effectiveness of horse units. Sure, they have lots of movement points, but if there are forests/hills/jungle - or god forbid, a river - you can't advance with them or they're within 2 tiles of some goddamn pikeman that's going to wreck your poo poo. And wide flat expanses are really unusual in Civ 5, I've found.
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Jul 26, 2013 03:07
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Horses are supposed to be speedy, flanking units. The problem being that unless you're waging war in the middle of a desert, there'll be hills and forests and coasts to help ensure that flanking can't happen. If you're talking about flanking the AI, congrats, but the AI is completely inept at tactics, so it doesn't really mean much. Add that mounted units tend to cost more than their counter and there's just no way it's worth building them. Ranged mounted units are decent though, but they fulfill completely different roles than the regular mounted units. And I've never built a swordsman. The tech path to get them is pretty bad, they require resources and they're not better than the unit you get out Civil Service, which leads into Education, a far better tech path. I've built a few longswordsmen, but that was mostly so I could upgrade them into muskets as soon as the tech finishes.
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Jul 26, 2013 03:07
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Mr. Pumroy posted:Sometimes I build swords over pikes because I know all those pikes are going to fall into the lancer pit as technology progresses and I would rather keep a unit that I know will be useful all the way into the future. Any remaining pikes at the industrial age I phase out, disbanding each as I build a new rifle to replace it. This is the reason I build swords over spears/pikes. I have never gotten in a war and been like "boy I'm glad I have all these lancers around"
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Jul 26, 2013 03:16
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In short, maps need to be bigger or archery units need to have their range reduced. It's already counter-intuitive why archers can plink away at a gatling gun without them being able to return fire. And it gets really weird when archers are firing across straits that you wouldn't want to try swimming across. Shorter range archers would make siege units more attractive, too. Might be worth modding it to see how the game changes.
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Jul 26, 2013 03:23
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Away all Goats posted:This is the reason I build swords over spears/pikes. I have never gotten in a war and been like "boy I'm glad I have all these lancers around" In fact the Lancer upgrade gives them the same problem as horses. Take your shiny new upgraded unit to get slaughtered by the unit it just replaced.
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Jul 26, 2013 03:28
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isndl posted:In short, maps need to be bigger or archery units need to have their range reduced. It's already counter-intuitive why archers can plink away at a gatling gun without them being able to return fire. And it gets really weird when archers are firing across straits that you wouldn't want to try swimming across. 
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Jul 26, 2013 03:30
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Tanks don't have the penalty against cities do they? If not, that's kinda silly, seeing as tanks are pretty terrible at urban warfare.
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Jul 26, 2013 03:33
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Crazy Ted posted:Mod siege units to a range of 10 Honestly if i ever got around to even quarter-assed modding i'd turn all units that aren't planes or missiles to range 1. It's plain bad game design to have units that bombard the way they do in CiV.
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Jul 26, 2013 03:39
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isndl posted:In short, maps need to be bigger or archery units need to have their range reduced. It's already counter-intuitive why archers can plink away at a gatling gun without them being able to return fire. And it gets really weird when archers are firing across straits that you wouldn't want to try swimming across. Archers have a range of two so that they can fire over the heads of a defending melee unit. That much works just fine. The problem is that they also are relatively strong in melee, so they aren't vulnerable to flanking. And they also do far too much damage to cities as compared to the early siege units. My solution would be to increase their reliance on melee units by reducing their melee defense. I'd also improve cavalry by giving them two attacks by default, so they could really take advantage of maneuver warfare.
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Jul 26, 2013 03:52
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Kaal posted:Archers have a range of two so that they can fire over the heads of a defending melee unit. That much works just fine. The problem is that they also are relatively strong in melee, so they aren't vulnerable to flanking. And they also do far too much damage to cities as compared to the early siege units. My solution would be to increase their reliance on melee units by reducing their melee defense. I'd also improve cavalry by giving them two attacks by default, so they could really take advantage of maneuver warfare. How about this: cut archer range to 1 tile, then give them a free attack when attacked sorta like Impis. They become very strong defensive units, much weaker on the offense, and a defending player can be forced into making more units instead of being able to rely on the same 4 or 5 archers because they barely get attacked even as they mow down units as that try to approach. In other words, make attrition of ranged units a big deal like attrition of melee units is. They can't shoot over the heads of melee units anymore, but I'm fine with that since rifle units apparently can't harass at a distance without committing to a full melee. Hell, give everyone with a supposedly ranged weapon that Impi free attack. Lategame will be brutal slaughters and it will be awesome.
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Jul 26, 2013 04:11
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Cynic Jester posted:I've built a few longswordsmen, but that was mostly so I could upgrade them into muskets as soon as the tech finishes. On this note, fiddling with the tech tree so longswordsmen don't get immediately obsoleted by the very next tech would be nice.
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Jul 26, 2013 04:14
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Pvt.Scott posted:Archers and spears dominate early you say? Sounds about right. This is the exact type of thinking that looks good on paper so Firaxis thought was a good idea. In practice, things never ever work out like this. With zones of control, you only need a couple units to screen against horses and the pikemen will tear them to shreds while the archer blob is unaffected. Even if this doesn't happen and you're able to do a complete breakthrough, here's what happens against an archer blob: You damage a couple with your horsemen, maybe even kill one. The blob focus fires down your horsemen, they're dead. Archer blobs trump all, and not even their counter is adept at taking them out, and that counter is really hard to use due to its own counter being so incredibly common. I think horsemen need to OHKO archers or get close, I think Blitz needs to come sooner in the promotion line for them (after shock/drill I?), and swords need to be stronger against spears. Dr. Video Games 0031 fucked around with this message at 04:32 on Jul 26, 2013 |
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Jul 26, 2013 04:15
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edit: poo poo, accidental double post.
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Jul 26, 2013 04:18
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I tried to get kris dudes as Indonesia the other day and it took me four rerolls before I got a spot that had iron even in sight by the time I got the prereq tech. When I finally got a game that gave me iron, I played long enough to realize that Honor is a terrible policy choice. There's no such thing as a big or small army in civ V, only a sufficient army, and Tradition and Liberty give you the tools to build a sufficient army while simultaneously allowing you to grow your cities in such a way that you won't be screwed a couple centuries later. If I'm playing an Autocracy kill-the-world kind of game I might come back to Honor further down the road, but as an opener it's a non-starter.
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Jul 26, 2013 04:33
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isndl posted:They can't shoot over the heads of melee units anymore, but I'm fine with that since rifle units apparently can't harass at a distance without committing to a full melee. Hell, give everyone with a supposedly ranged weapon that Impi free attack. Lategame will be brutal slaughters and it will be awesome. It's worth noting that Civ 4 did something similar with archers, guns, etc. having First Strikes. In that game, cavalry was pretty dominant because they were immune to first strikes and their extra move actually meant something.
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Jul 26, 2013 04:38
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Bro Enlai posted:It's worth noting that Civ 4 did something similar with archers, guns, etc. having First Strikes. In that game, cavalry was pretty dominant because they were immune to first strikes and their extra move actually meant something. Hell, it's been so long since I played Civ4 that I completely forgot. Wonder how many other old mechanics are just sitting there waiting to be reused.
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Jul 26, 2013 05:07
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 Well gently caress, maybe I beelined Petra a BIT too hard this game.
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Jul 26, 2013 05:30
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As interesting as the new culture/tourism stuff is it sure is loving boring lategame, when all your great dudes are taking 800/900+ points to make, there's no more techs/wonders to get, and you're basically just sitting on your rear end waiting for it to end. Played as Brazil in a dense-rear end jungle, culture-camps everywhere, only 3 cities since there weren't many good build spots and my production was poo poo but whatever, I got almost all the culture wonders and am cranking out 800+ tourism a turn once I hit the interwebs... Then got to sit around with my thumb in my rear end for like 70 turns so I could out-culture the Zulu of all loving people because he steamrolled like 3 other civs and got their great works. Should have saved my free artist from Aesthetics for the end for the golden age I guess, good grief.
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Jul 26, 2013 05:49
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Prop Wash posted:I tried to get kris dudes as Indonesia the other day and it took me four rerolls before I got a spot that had iron even in sight by the time I got the prereq tech. When I finally got a game that gave me iron, I played long enough to realize that Honor is a terrible policy choice. There's no such thing as a big or small army in civ V, only a sufficient army, and Tradition and Liberty give you the tools to build a sufficient army while simultaneously allowing you to grow your cities in such a way that you won't be screwed a couple centuries later. If I'm playing an Autocracy kill-the-world kind of game I might come back to Honor further down the road, but as an opener it's a non-starter. It's true that armies are basically just 'sufficient' and i'm at the point of having a literal goddamn thesis about this that is longer and better than my actual for-career thesis. Honor's opening policy is actually incredibly strong, and i'm starting to consider using it as my default opener, it's very effective at weighting your policies earlier in the game since it makes huge culture production, and one of my biggest problems these days is my scouts getting ganked by barbarians. Most of Honor is unfortunately weak though the closer is rad as hell in endgame (but so is Piety's, buyin' nukes with faith). Iron is a contender for 'most frustrating resource' in the game. In archipelago maps it rules but in everything else it's such a crapshoot, plus archers just dominate everything so badly.
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Jul 26, 2013 05:50
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Yeah I really do like Honor's opener, since I normally take Liberty anyway I may try out opening Honor, then doing Liberty, and find out if the Barbarian culture pump actually makes up for that first policy. It seems like it might, and the side benefit is that you barbarian bust way faster - a significant bonus, especially if you intend to grab a lot of early ruins.
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Jul 26, 2013 05:54
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Indecisive posted:As interesting as the new culture/tourism stuff is it sure is loving boring lategame, when all your great dudes are taking 800/900+ points to make, there's no more techs/wonders to get, and you're basically just sitting on your rear end waiting for it to end. Played as Brazil in a dense-rear end jungle, culture-camps everywhere, only 3 cities since there weren't many good build spots and my production was poo poo but whatever, I got almost all the culture wonders and am cranking out 800+ tourism a turn once I hit the interwebs... Then got to sit around with my thumb in my rear end for like 70 turns so I could out-culture the Zulu of all loving people because he steamrolled like 3 other civs and got their great works. Should have saved my free artist from Aesthetics for the end for the golden age I guess, good grief. If you're only generating 800~ tourism with the loving Internet of all things, you done hosed up somewhere along the line. My first suspicion is that you're not pushing aggressively enough for Open Borders, nor are you distributing trade routes amongst all civs for the sweet sweet bonuses. Seriously, Open Borders and having trade routes with Literally Everyone is your lifeblood in cultural wins. In cultural games, it's quite crucial to be very aggressive with exploration right out the gate. In my recent Poland game, I achieved cultural victory on Turn 303. No Airports. Only just got Hotels and the Eiffel Tower, slammed it home with the double Tourism bonus from International Games.
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Jul 26, 2013 05:56
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BadLlama posted:I like Germany. Just roll around slaughtering barbarians while you get a huge army that costed you nothing and can be used to trash an AI expansion city and not care if you lose some units. Pvt.Scott posted:E: I will concede that cavalry in Civ V is 99% of the time a gigantic waste of resources that could be used elsewhere. A boy can dream though. Fur20 fucked around with this message at 06:06 on Jul 26, 2013 |
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Jul 26, 2013 06:02
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Captain Oblivious posted:If you're only generating 800~ tourism with the loving Internet of all things, you done hosed up somewhere along the line. My first suspicion is that you're not pushing aggressively enough for Open Borders, nor are you distributing trade routes amongst all civs for the sweet sweet bonuses. Seriously, Open Borders and having trade routes with Literally Everyone is your lifeblood in cultural wins. Do you just need open borders in their land for the bonus?
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Jul 26, 2013 06:03
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Super Jay Mann posted:I'm a total Civ 4 purist but I still enjoy Civ 5 for what it is and it's indeed much better with this expansion than before. Like many other things, I think Alpha Centauri did it best. You can stack units all you drat well please, but if one dies, every other unit in the stack gets collateral damage based on the reactor class of the unit destroyed. So this massive doomstack of yours is great and all until the fusion-reactor sentinel gets whacked and it knocks out 20% health of 10 other units. But that said, I really like the tactical considerations no unit stacking forces on us. Scouting out terrain is actually really important now, knowing where you're going to attack a position from and everything. It makes wars a little more cerebral than "STACK HAMMERS -> ASSAULT THE BASE" Coolguye fucked around with this message at 06:07 on Jul 26, 2013 |
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Jul 26, 2013 06:05
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Trabisnikof posted:Do you just need open borders in their land for the bonus? Having an Open Borders treaty with someone is a +25% Tourism bonus with that civ. Having a trade route, even just one, with that civ is another +25% bonus. Having the same faith is yet another 25% bonus. I've considered actually staying out of the faith game entirely and LETTING myself be converted to the religion of whoever the gently caress just for added efficiency.
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Jul 26, 2013 06:05
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Indecisive posted:As interesting as the new culture/tourism stuff is it sure is loving boring lategame, when all your great dudes are taking 800/900+ points to make, there's no more techs/wonders to get, and you're basically just sitting on your rear end waiting for it to end. Played as Brazil in a dense-rear end jungle, culture-camps everywhere, only 3 cities since there weren't many good build spots and my production was poo poo but whatever, I got almost all the culture wonders and am cranking out 800+ tourism a turn once I hit the interwebs... Then got to sit around with my thumb in my rear end for like 70 turns so I could out-culture the Zulu of all loving people because he steamrolled like 3 other civs and got their great works. Should have saved my free artist from Aesthetics for the end for the golden age I guess, good grief. It sounds like you weren't properly taking advantage of Great Musicians. Once you get above a couple hundred tourism per turn, just do concert tours. It really massively speeds things up. Coolguye posted:Like many other things, I think Alpha Centauri did it best. You can stack units all you drat well please, but if one dies, every other unit in the stack gets collateral damage based on the reactor class of the unit destroyed. I think At the Gates, Jon Shafer's next game (the lead designer of vanilla Civ V, now independent), is doing the right compromise on stacks. AtG will have stacking, but there is going to be Paradox style supply limits on the tiles. Going over the supply limit will cause the stack to take attrition damage. Building supply camps nearby will increase supply limit and allow you to field larger stacks. Otherwise you have to spread your army. There are various factors that go into supply like the terrain type, local resources, and the seasons. I forget the other specifics but it seems like a well thought out system and a good way to handle stacking in a terrestrial 4X game. Incidentally, At the Gates has me pretty excited. I was really heavily critical of Civ 5 when it first came out and thus was instantly skeptical when I heard that its lead designer was making a new 4X game. But he himself is actually pretty critical of Civ 5 as well, and has written really well reasoned critiques on the game, about what worked, what didn't work, and so on. He seemed to really understand why Civ 5 was a lackluster experience and everything I've heard about his new game just sounds awesome. It's like he honest to god learned from his mistakes and is really trying to make a better experience. edit: He also regularly posts massive walls of text on game systems on the kickstarter update page: http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/jonshafer/jon-shafers-at-the-gates/posts And here's his postmortem article on Civ V for those interested: http://jonshaferondesign.com/2013/02/18/revisiting-the-design-of-civ-5/ I recommend all fans of the game to give it a read. Dr. Video Games 0031 fucked around with this message at 06:21 on Jul 26, 2013 |
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Jul 26, 2013 06:06
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Dr. Video Games 0031 posted:It sounds like you weren't properly taking advantage of Great Musicians. Once you get above a couple hundred tourism per turn, just do concert tours. It really massively speeds things up. This also. I regret forgetting to do this because I could have won sub-turn 300 had I done so.
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Jul 26, 2013 06:08
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Hearing everyone complain about your blue jeans and pop music when you're like, anyone not from the West, is kind of insulting. I wouldn't expect Nebuchadnezzar or Attila or Haile to be exporting pop music and blue jeans, because that's not their culture. Even if they lasted until modern times.
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Jul 26, 2013 06:10
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Getting +2 happiness from temples as Egypt feels like cheating. 4 upkeep free happiness out of Burial Tombs just makes settling all the cities completely painless. I ran out of space at 12 cities pre-renaissance and I was still at 4 happiness, with every city at 6+ pop. Tradition into 2 points of Piety also meant all those shrines and temples were doing absurd things for my faith income. So many prophets. Think I'll try an ICS style setup with the +2 sci/connection belief and see what happens.
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Jul 26, 2013 06:19
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