Rebalancing Civ4: RtR Mod

[Dhalphir]

It seems fairly evident that trebs are better than cats at attacking cities,

They don't seem to be better enough to justify their much higher position in the tech tree, though.

[Fintourist]

This discussion has went already far, but let's chime in with 1 more post. According to my understanding of mechanics, trebs are worth their hammer cost compared to cats in following 2 situations.
1. When you bombard, attack with siege and clean-up during one single turn (and use trebs as bombarding units)
2. You attack cities and the top defender has a specific strenght range (modified), roughly >5 and <8, so that cats don't get odds but trebs do. Because of jumping points in combat odds calculation at this level you can expect to lose less hammers when attacking with 2 trebs than with 3 cats. 3 Cats are probably still likely to do more damage than 2 trebs in this situation so whether you actually save hammers depends also on how that extra damage affects the combat odds and survival of your follow-up units.

Cats are obviously more flexible, but building trebs can be justified, if you can with great likelyhood say that you get to use trebs in the way described above.

[Krill]

Is the cost justified? Only thing that I'd consider would be dropping cost to 70 and maybe innate collateral bonus to be equal to cats.

[WilliamLP]

What's interesting and not at all self-evident is that Flagauto's original idea (8 strength unit) would actually make them weaker attacking city top defenders than they currently are. This, because the high modifier (100%) ends up being worth more in the calculation than the lower base strength.

[Fintourist]

Yeah, I think dropping the cost to 70 and possibly improving treb to e.g. 5 strenght & +60-80 % city attack would make treb a more interesting investment. It's of course not the only possibilty.

[spacetyrantxenu]

I'm more inclined to think the problem isn't so much with the unit as with the cost and (maybe) tech placement. They aren't so much better that anyone would ever really invest in Engineering to get them anyway, you get Engineering for movement and access to pike when you need them. That said, I think the tech placement is reasonable enough, I think it's more cost than anything. They aren't that much more useful than cats in attacking cities, so they shouldn't cost that much more either. I don't know if they'd be worth building at 70 hammers if cats are only 50. I guess a down side of dropping the cost too much would be that it would make the upgrade to cannons too cheap if there wasn't enough of a base cost investment in building the trebuchet in the first place, although that's a secondary concern to getting the cost/value of the trebuchet right itself. Maybe 65 is a good number, 70 seems too high and 60 too low. But 65 is a strange number for normal speed, I don't know what the right number would be but I would guess it's somewhere in that area.

[T-hawk]

Cats do more collateral when attacking cities. The mechanic is explained here. "The only potential attacker strength bonus is Barrage." Nothing else modifies the attacker's strength (including HP) for the purposes of calculating collateral.

That article is massively out of date.

I seem to remember that Barrage I is a worthless promo for a treb because the increase gets rounded away. Barrage I is +20% collateral? Thus a cat goes from 5 to 6 while a Treb goes from 4 to 4 (4 x 1.2 rounded down).

So is this information.

Collateral is now based on the unit strength ratios. A catapult collateralizing a rifleman in the open will deal less damage than the same cat against a longbowman. All modifiers apply, so a treb at 4 + 100% attacking a city will deal more than a cat at 5.

Barrage multiplies the collateral damage after the prior step. It was changed to modify damage instead of the unit's base strength for exactly that reason of rounding error.

[novice]

I guess a down side of dropping the cost too much would be that it would make the upgrade to cannons too cheap if there wasn't enough of a base cost investment in building the trebuchet in the first place

Upgrade costs are directly dependent on the difference in hammer cost, so lowering the Treb's hammer cost would make upgrades to cannon more expensive, not more cost-efficient.

[Ruff_Hi]

@Fintourist - that is similar to what I was thinking. Treb identical to cats with the addition of the city attack and higher cost. Then they would be identical in the field.

[Fintourist]

Although now I have to probably rethink my stand if what T-Hawk said is true.

Collateral is now based on the unit strength ratios. A catapult collateralizing a rifleman in the open will deal less damage than the same cat against a longbowman. All modifiers apply, so a treb at 4 + 100% attacking a city will deal more than a cat at 5.

Didn't cats do still more collateral when attacking cities in WilliamLPs test? I'm confused by this, because I've heard both statements multiple times, but haven't never bothered testing myself..