The nerf to Carthage brings this to mind. I get that Firaxis wants to balance naval units, but naval units also exchange fire with land units. Before the nerf, Carthage could exchange fire with slingers. Now slingers have twice the range? How? By what technology? In game play effects, it means slingers can bombard a coastal settlement with impunity unless the mostly naval power builds land units. But in historical sense, there's no logic to slingers having that kind of range. Or for any unit in antiquity having that kind of range. Make them all range 1, with combat strength to recognize more effective weapons.
#All antiquity units should only have range 1, no range 2.
wet linden
jade monolith
i mean if they had range 1 ranged/siege units would be absolutely garbage
it gives a counter to naval units, since they're incredibly powerful
wet linden
Naval units are already limited by where they can go, i.e., never in from the coast. Why do the slingers and archers on the boats have half the range of the ones on land?
sullen coral
May be adjust the cost instead of nerf the attack range
crude jungle
Would be a huge nerf for range and bombard and terrible for balance. If I can‘t place ranged units behind terrain or other units they‘d be easy fodder for cavalry/infantry
wet linden
Would be a huge nerf for range and bombard and terrible for balance. If I can‘t ...
Allowing land units more range than ships puts the naval power at a huge disadvantage. Catapults, archers - even slingers - can pelt the ships with impunity. Why play a naval power? When it's so much more effective to use archers instead?
I could see giving siege equipment range 2. They are bigger and more powerful. But why slingers? What are slingers doing that gives them more range than ships?
wet linden
Historically, there was no such disparity between the range of land and sea units.
crude jungle
Well none of the ranges are based in reality, because nothing until maybe modern artillery would shoot a distance that makes sense on a world map scale.
Thats a design and gameplay decicion to simulate a tactical battle on the same map instead of going to a battle map with better scaling like e.g. Total War does.
I‘m not sure why they chose to give ships 1 range. Maybe because ancient ship vs ship fights were usually won by ramming or boarding the other ship instead of sinking it from a distance. Also I don‘t think there were many examples of ships used to attack cities except to block the harbors but I might be wrong there.
The issue if you try to rebalance naval vs land battles by taking away range from land is that you ruin the land vs land balance. Probably a lot more land vs land than land vs naval fighting is being done in the game. While right now it is skewed towards cavalry because infantry is weak, if you take away the usefulness of ranged then it will mostly make sense to have cavalry only armies. Not very fun. Also siege equipment is strong against naval units, so you wouldn’t help the naval vs land balance a lot.
Regarding Slingers if you search for distance of ancient slingers you‘ll find generation-old internet debates about them having greater range than archers.
wet linden
Well none of the ranges are based in reality, because nothing until maybe modern...
My main gripe is ships having shorter range than land units, other than maybe siege units. If I were designing the game, I'd keep the two even. Or do it like Civ 6, where you had both ranged and melee naval units, which could depend on how you'd trained the crew.
crude jungle
Wasnt it the same in civ vi? Archers and catapults had range 2 in antiquity, ships had to wait till frigates (exploration)