Civ 6 Release and Update Discussion Thread

[Singaboy]

I have play tested England a little on Island maps. it's insanely overpowered. The cheap docks you can spam everywhere give you gold, trade routes and a lead in Great Admirals, it's not even funny.

With a few frigates and caravels, you can terrorize every coastal city. I took cities with mere two caravel attacks, walls are down with two shots of frigates. It's truly insane. And once you are taking cities on other continents, you get melee units for free to continue the conquest at land locked cities. I think people need to try this out themselves to believe it.

[suboptimal]

It seems to me like a simple way to counter that is to make anti-cav extremely vulnerable to melee. Sure, the other guy can cram out a bunch of spears and make all those horses you have useless, but what if you've built horses backed by swordsmen?

...

1)Something to fix the movement rules. The movement rules are responsible both for the strength of horsemen and the strength of navies, since these units can race around and bypass defenses easily.

...

3)Something to boost spears/pikes/.../anti-tank against the units they're meant to counter. Something along the lines of even greater boosted strength against their counter, coupled with a vulnerability to some other units, in the interests of forcing players to build balanced armies to be competitive.

- I can't remember if melee units get a bonus against anti-cavalry and am not at my home computer to check.  Generally speaking, though, the base strength of anti-cav is in-line with melee units when considering where they are located on the tech tree (warrior < spear < sword < pike strengths, for example).  Horses backed by swords should be able to handle spears. 

- Cavalry is supposed to be more mobile than "regular" land units, no?  What do you feel about the movement rules makes cavalry overpowered?  As far as navies go the large movement rate "advantage" should be negated by one's own navy.  

- Anti-cavalry are +10 combat strength against cavalry units IIRC, so they do get boosted against the units they counter.  They are comparable in strength to same-era units with the boost. 

One issue that people seem to have with anti-cav units ties in with Ichabod's earlier comments about policy cards - melee, ranged and cavalry are easier to crank out faster because of the policy cards while anti-cav (and perhaps siege) don't have similar boosts, so the "production efficient strategy" is to not build them unless necessary for eurekas or other special game circumstances.

[pindicator]

For what it's worth, Singa, the PBEMs here have significantly boosted my interest in Civ 6. I thought I was largely done with the game before that, now I'm fascinated. I love the wild swings in fortune we've seen in the even-numbered PBEMs so far, and the tactical complexities that have arisen in the odds. I'm a sample size of one, though.

I wanted to second this. Ded-lurking Ichabod in pbem3 has only made me more eager to play in a pbem myself.

[Krill]

I want to play in a game, but tbh I think I'm likely to not be able to comply with a turn slot. I'm interested in fucking it up spectacularly because I have no idea what I'm doing.

[Quagma Blast]

Melee units do get +10 strength against anti-cav, though one of the early AC promotions gives them +10 strength when defending against melee.

I think you could mostly fix anticavalry units by doing two things: first, make their ZOC apply to cavalry units (so they can actually counter some of the tactical advantages) and second, make the tech that unlocks Pikemen not a dead-end. Maybe as a prerequisite to Stirrups, so the Knight beeline isn't quite so direct.

[Japper007]

- Cavalry is supposed to be more mobile than "regular" land units, no?  What do you feel about the movement rules makes cavalry overpowered?  As far as navies go the large movement rate "advantage" should be negated by one's own navy.  

The problem with cavalry is due to the way Civ 6 movement system differs from Civ 5's (mostly to it's detriment IMHO). Looking at the stats you'd think: "well cavalry moves only 33 percent faster than infantry (2 vs 3 moves), so what's the big deal right?", well it doesn't work out that way in practice. 
In practice, an infantry unit can move onto a hill tile and has to use both it's movement points to get onto it, a cav unit can move onto a hill tile and then still move into a tile behind it. This means that, as long as there is a mix of hills and flat ground, cavalry effectively moves twice as fast as infantry and, with a competent player in control, can never be caught by infantry. You also really can't retreat to a defensive position with cav at your back, eventually you just get run over. The only viable counter to cav, is having more cav yourself, that's just poor game design IMHO.
That's not even mentioning the craziness when you have a GG boosted cavalry stack, which can strike out of the fog and even the defenders cavalry can't catch you.

[suboptimal]

- Cavalry is supposed to be more mobile than "regular" land units, no?  What do you feel about the movement rules makes cavalry overpowered?  As far as navies go the large movement rate "advantage" should be negated by one's own navy.  

The problem with cavalry is due to the way Civ 6 movement system differs from Civ 5's (mostly to it's detriment IMHO). Looking at the stats you'd think: "well cavalry moves only 33 percent faster than infantry (2 vs 3 moves), so what's the big deal right?", well it doesn't work out that way in practice. 
In practice, an infantry unit can move onto a hill tile and has to use both it's movement points to get onto it, a cav unit can move onto a hill tile and then still move into a tile behind it. This means that, as long as there is a mix of hills and flat ground, cavalry effectively moves twice as fast as infantry and, with a competent player in control, can never be caught by infantry. You also really can't retreat to a defensive position with cav at your back, eventually you just get run over. The only viable counter to cav, is having more cav yourself, that's just poor game design IMHO.
That's not even mentioning the craziness when you have a GG boosted cavalry stack, which can strike out of the fog and even the defenders cavalry can't catch you.

I only dabbled in Civ 5 while waiting for 6 to come out, so please correct my recollection if I've got this wrong, but in 5 didn't hills cost 2 MP, most melee units had 2 MP and most mounted units had 4 MP?  Mounted units in 5 could also move after attacking while in 6 only Cossacks can do so (again, IIRC).  I don't see how this is much different than in 6 with perhaps the exception of forested/jungle hills - what am I forgetting about 5 that makes it that different than 6?

[Singaboy]

By the way, horsemen have a movement of 4 compared to 2 for melee units. It makes quite a difference and with e GG, it's 5. You can then cross a river and attack. You can cross forested hills and still attack. It's a huge advantage. Cossacks with a GG are OP units as we have witnesses in PBEM2.

Naval units become OP with GA's in tow as quadriremes/frigates are the naval version of catapults/bombards with a little, but in effect HUGE difference. Frigates can move and shoot in one turn (in fact they can sail 5 tiles and shoot with GA support). When you have a land war, few would use a catapult or bombard as it would be exposed to city wall fire due to the 'cant shoot after moving' restriction. Why is this restriction not applied to the naval counterpart?

I feel there are lots of imbalances we have yet to uncover. The fact though remains, whoever owns a GG or GA has a huge advantage. It almost feels like C3C army days.

[Japper007]

@suboptimal:

The difference is that in civ 5 a unit with two movement can move into a hill after it has already crossed a flatland tile (say for example, to attack a horseman on a hill). In civ 6 you'd ber stuck on the flatland tile, unless there is another flatland to move into. A cavalry unit that is two tiles away+on rough terrain can't be attacked by infantry, unless the inf is GG boosted.

@Singaboy:

Yeah I misremembered, scouts are 3 moves, horses 4. The issue with it's interaction with the movement system remains the same though.

[suboptimal]

@suboptimal:

The difference is that in civ 5 a unit with two movement can move into a hill after it has already crossed a flatland tile (say for example, to attack a horseman on a hill). In civ 6 you'd ber stuck on the flatland tile, unless there is another flatland to move into. A cavalry unit that is two tiles away+on rough terrain can't be attacked by infantry, unless the inf is GG boosted.

Ah, OK.  Thanks for the explanation.