AU mod: Wheeled units and impassable terrain

[alexman]

The very first version of the AU mod, which was based on player1’s Patch Suggestion mod, prevented Tanks, Mechanized Infantry, Modern Armor, and all Artillery from entering Jungle and Mountains.

The reason for this change was so that other units become useful in the late-game under certain conditions. Paratroopers were the best late-game defenders in jungle and mountains, for example, and Marines were the best attackers in such terrain. The change also sometimes encouraged more naval invasions to bypass impassable mountains and jungles, or increased air power to compensate for the loss of attack and defense strength of units that could reach the enemy. Realism was also a factor in making the change.

Unfortunately, the AI did not handle the change well, and it was removed from the mod in PTW. It was easier for the human to create kill zones between mountains and jungles. Also, AI often separated wheeled from non-wheeled units to reach the enemy, which resulted in lack of concentration of its force. In effect, jungles and mountains could divide a continent into sub-continents, and we all know how poor the AI was in dealing with intercontinental invasions.

The C3C version of the mod deserves some discussion on this topic. Do the deeper military tactics involved with the existence of wheeled units justify potentially hurting the AI? After all, the AI is terrible at military tactics anyway, relying instead on high number of units, so perhaps an extra handicap in military tactics will not make that much difference in its performance.

Perhaps we should we take the idea one step farther, giving all mounted units the wheeled ability, removing roads from mountains, and adding forests to the list of impassable terrain to wheeled units! (OK, don’t shoot; I was just trying to spark some discussion!).

Comments?

[ducki]

giving all mounted units the wheeled ability,

So horsemen and knights would be unable to ride through the mountains? Or jungles or forests?
That just seems a bit too heavyhanded to me and unrealistic. I think the high worker-turn cost of roading these terrains is a high enough cost, especially considering C3C's resource scarcity making swordsmen not a "sure thing".

I think the biggest impact would be ancient/early middle ages, before mountains/jungles have been roaded or cleared and any civ stuck without iron would appear to be at a distinct advantage, but that's a specific case, not general reasoning.

Most importantly I just can't make the logical connection of horsemen or elephants being unable to navigate mountains, forest, and jungle.

[alexman]

Wheeled mounted units makes for some interesting military strategy (and this mod is about deeper strategy), but I agree it's too big of a change, and I was just kidding when I mentioned it in the first post.

This thread is really about wheeled mechanized and artillery units.

[ducki]

Ah, ok. I took it a bit too seriously it seems.

By the time tanks roll (haha) around, is there enough jungles or unroaded mountains to be a consistently important as well as consistently exploitable feature? (I'm asking, not being snarky.)

[Risa]

Originally posted by ducki
By the time tanks roll (haha) around, is there enough jungles or unroaded mountains to be a consistently important as well as consistently exploitable feature? (I'm asking, not being snarky.)

I think it's quite common to see long strings of mountains. As for jungle, when a single line of jungles can keep AI's motorized forces out, will anyone chop them down?

The general idea is, if AI can't handle it, we shouldn't make it that way.

[Jaybe]

Disclaimer: Real Life/Historical references ahead, and therefore not necessarily relevant to the AU.

Mounted & mechanized units don't do well in "close" terrain. Since we cannot give terrian defense bonuses to units based on opposing units, I make them all wheeled and even forests impassable to wheeled.

It DOES add to the fun factor, and has even given ME problems before everything is roaded by the AI (I will sometimes not road border forests, etc. to serve as barriers). Since C3C arrived, I have not (yet) returned to having mountains impassable to everyone.

[ducki]

As for jungle, when a single line of jungles can keep AI's motorized forces out, will anyone chop them down?

If I wanted to work those tiles, you bet I would. I'd rather have productive citizens than a natural barrier whose effects I can reproduce by pulling the AI around by the nose with a worker - both of which would feel too exploity to me to use unless the need was very dire.

It may be that because I've grown to actually like(*gasp) a fairly tight city spacing, I can't really afford to have tiles dedicated to sealing a border, so my view may be too biased due to my own playstyle and shouldn't be viewed as 100% objective.

[Fosse]

I always missed that change after it was taken out of the first AU. It would prevent me from dropping tanks on mountains and letting the AI kill its attackers in one or two turns of hopeless charging, and it felt fun.

It is a great addition to MP (which I have yet to play to the industrial or modern eras), and I am not educated enough on the AI to know if this change - considering that the AI roads everything by the late game anyhow - would hurt it.

I'd love to see it back, but not at too great a cost.

[nbarclay]

The one change that I think would be clearly beneficial is adding the "wheeled" flag to artillery (and probably also radar artillery). That would virtually never hinder AIs, but removing the ability to include artillery in an invasion force landed on mountains would undercut mountain landings for humans a bit without the same negative impact on AIs that adding "wheeled" to tanks, MechInfs, and MAs would have.

[lockstep]

Originally posted by alexman
Perhaps we should ... take the idea one step further, giving all mounted units the wheeled ability, removing roads from mountains, and adding forests to the list of impassable terrain to wheeled units!

Removing roads from mountains creates too many problems for the AI (the 'sub-continent'-effect). However, you could drastically increase the movement costs of mountains (from 3 to 8 or even 12) so that it would take very long (and wouldn't be cost-effective) to road mountains. A human player faced with a long mountain chain in his territory then would build only one strategically important mountain passage, but leave the rest of the mountains alone. It would have to be tested how the AI handles this.

As a side effect, it would also be harder to build mines on mountains. This effect could be diminished by changing mountains from 1 shield / +2 with mines to 2 shields / +1 with mines.

EDIT: I support making tank and artillery type units wheeled (like in former AU mod versions), but mounted units should be left alone. (I'm not sure about making forests impassable for wheeled units.)

[Theseus]

Originally posted by nbarclay
The one change that I think would be clearly beneficial is adding the "wheeled" flag to artillery (and probably also radar artillery). That would virtually never hinder AIs, but removing the ability to include artillery in an invasion force landed on mountains would undercut mountain landings for humans a bit without the same negative impact on AIs that adding "wheeled" to tanks, MechInfs, and MAs would have.

Me likey.

[Aqualung71]

Originally posted by alexman
removing roads from mountains

As in, you can't build roads on mountains any more? This would also affect shield/gold production.

[Aqualung71]

Originally posted by nbarclay
The one change that I think would be clearly beneficial is adding the "wheeled" flag to artillery

Would this mean artillery can never enter mountains, or only if the mountain is not roaded?

[Jaybe]

I understand that alexman isn't serious about this, but if you were to remove roads from mountains, you would (of course) have to remove strat/lux resources from mountains so they wouldn't be even scarcer than now. Not a huge deal, as long as it is done.

[ZargonX]

I actually set up a PBEM with pretty much the exact restrictions that are being talked about over at MZO. I can post the mod here, if anyone is interested.

[nbarclay]

I ran a test scenario (using chariots) to doublecheck, and wheeled units can move onto a roaded tile of otherwise impassable terrain only if they are moving along a road (that is, from one roaded tile onto another). If a wheeled unit starts on an unroaded tile or tries to land from the sea, a road on the tile the unit wants to move onto makes no difference. Just in case anyone isn't aware of it, the fact that a road is in another civ's territory does not keep wheeled units from using it to move through otherwise impassable terrain, although of course the road's movement bonus does not apply in the absence of a ROP agreement.

So with the Wheeled flag, artillery and radar artillery could move along roads to attack enemy territory regardless of the terrain, but could not participate in amphibious invasions of mountains, volcanoes, jungle, or marsh even if the tiles they want to land on are roaded. So we would get the effect we (presumably)want with respect to preventing players from landing artillery as part of amphibious operations.

[Aqualung71]

Yes, and it also makes sense. Can't imagine too many Trebuchet's being dragged across an unroaded mountain!

[alexman]

Just in case someone had not noticed Catapults, Trebuchets, and Cannons are already wheeled.

[Hermann the Lombard]

Originally posted by ZargonX
I actually set up a PBEM with pretty much the exact restrictions that are being talked about over at MZO. I can post the mod here, if anyone is interested.

Hmm...since the AI handles all of this poorly, would it be feasible to implement the change only for MP? (Mind you, I'm much too slow to *ever* play MP.)

[Dominae]

Adding Wheeled to Artillery sounds fine. Everything else does not provide a clear enough benefit to be worth the change.


Dominae

[Aqualung71]

Originally posted by alexman
Just in case someone had not noticed Catapults, Trebuchets, and Cannons are already wheeled.

Yes.....I'm getting confused again

[Risa]

Originally posted by Dominae
Adding Wheeled to Artillery sounds fine. Everything else does not provide a clear enough benefit to be worth the change.

By the age of artillery, AI should road every tile already.

[nbarclay]

Originally posted by Risa

By the age of artillery, AI should road every tile already.

That depends on the tech pace. Get a big tech lead pushing at a fast tech pace and there's a good chance there will be unroaded tiles in existence when you get artillery. That's especially true with tiles that are within an AI's cultural borders but that are not within a city radius for a city to work them, and of jungles an AI hasn't gotten around to clearing to work yet. Still, except maybe if there's been some pillaging, the cities will all be connected by roads that the artillery can move along.

In any case, my main goal with the suggestion that artillery and radar artillery be given the wheeled flag was to keep players from including them in a stack landed on mountains in an amphibious assault. That way, AIs don't have to face both artillery and the mountain defense bonus at the same time when counterattacking amphibious landings. For that purpose, it doesn't matter whether the mountain a player wants to land on is roaded or not because an amphibious landing does not qualify as movement along a road.

[Arrian]

To "wheeled" artillery. First, it makes gameplay sense. Second, it also happens to be fairly realistic. Arty DOES have wheels.

-Arrian

[alexman]

Under consideration:

1. Yes/No: Add wheeled property to Artillery
2. Yes/No: If 1 results in a Yes, also add wheeled property to Radar Artillery.
3. Yes/No: If 1 and 2 result in yes, add wheeled property to Tank, Mechanized Infantry, Modern Armor, Panzer.

Voting in a week.

[alexman]

It's been a week. Time to vote. 48 hours.

Mine:

1. Yes
2. Yes
3. Yes

After thinking about it for a week, I think that wheeled mechanized units will add enough depth to military tactics to make it worth the change. Giving another use for Special Forces will also encourage the human to research their optional tech requirements a little more often. The situation where the AI is handicapped by jungle/mountain barriers are not very common.

[ZargonX]

1. Yes
2. Yes
3. Yes

[lockstep]

1: YES
2: YES
3: YES

[Moonbars]

Originally posted by alexman
It's been a week. Time to vote. 48 hours.


After thinking about it for a week, I think that wheeled mechanized units will add enough depth to military tactics to make it worth the change. Giving another use for Special Forces will also encourage the human to research their optional tech requirements a little more often. The situation where the AI is handicapped by jungle/mountain barriers are not very common.

Also, as the AI seems to research these techs a fair bit more than players do, it gives them a use for the units..

[Theseus]

Y
Y
N (but Y if we do a full-blown Special Forces unit)