Balancing the Howie

[necrosmith]

Many people will agree that the Howitzer is far too powerful of a unit and not balanced very well. I was kicking around ideas on how to modify the unit to make it more balanced. I also think that the tank should be the most powerful ground unit in the game, and not the howitzer. With these goals in mind, I made the following changes:

1) Reduced the movement rate of the howitzer to 1.
I felt that the abilitiy to ignore city walls was a powerful enough upgrade over standard artillery, and that the added movement point was too much. The reduced movement rate better reflects the vulnerability of artilery pieces to attack from other units. With a movement of one, you almost have to stack the unit with another defensive unit. Further, the tank unit gains a bit in terms of balance against the howitzer because of the tanks even greater mobility compared to the howitzer.

2) Increased the cost of the howitzer to 100 shields.
This should reduce the number of howitzers you build. The ability to ignore city walls is probably worth even more than this modest price increase.

Please let me know your thoughts.

I was also trying to come up with ways to balance railroads a bit more. As it stands now, railroads seem way too powerful. They amount to increasing the movement points of all your ground units to infinity.

[DrSpike]

Both those suggestions are reasonable..........if I was to change civ2 I'd nerf howies and spies a bit, and probably make caravans contribute less to science.

[Heerscher]

Talking about changes: I would kick the goodie huts out, or at least tone down their importance. Right now I have the feeling that at higher difficulty levels to much depends on luck with goodie huts in the beginning, when you want to have a good game.

[Scouse Gits]

What's a howitzer?

SG[1]

[Six Thousand Year Old Man]

Originally posted by Scouse Gits
What's a howitzer?

SG[1]

I used to play with the various unit characteristics - one thing I tried was taking away the 'ignore walls' toggle on Howitzers, and giving Marines the 'ignore walls' along with a firepower boost. Makes the Howitzer less useful and provides a use for Marines. But then the game got really slow, and I just wound up using Spies for conquest.

Really, the game is not intended to be a straight-up combat simulation - and most things, such as trade, work really well. There are lots of aspects of Civ that make me wonder if the programmers planned things to work that way, or if it was just amazing good luck

[DrSpike]

Originally posted by Six Thousand Year Old Man

There are lots of aspects of Civ that make me wonder if the programmers planned things to work that way, or if it was just amazing good luck

I came to the conclusion a long time ago that there is no way it is all design that Civ2 is as great as it is SP and MP. Of course the fundamental solidity of the game is the fertile ground in which greatness grows, but there is no doubt in my mind that serendipity is also a factor.

[atawa]

1, sounds fair, not for the movement as there are railroads or engineers to make them but for the 2 attacks witch makes them too powerfull.

2, Just deliver a couple of more caravans, no biggie.

Overall sounds like a good idea

[Elephant]

Originally posted by necrosmith

1) Reduced the movement rate of the howitzer to 1.

Ever heard of the USArmy's Palladin (sp?), or the Crusader program, both of which are 6" howitzers on a tank chassis? The whole idea is to make the artillery as mobile as the tanks, able to "shoot&scoot" before counterbattery fire can take them out. They even come with armored resupply vehicles now that have auto-feed conveyors.

[DrSpike]

All civ is an abstraction.........the foremost consideration when making any changes should be the effect on gameplay. Of course there are people (they live mostly in the civ future and past forum) who think that anything that adds realism is good, and since reality is 'balanced' if the game representation is good the game will be balanced. These people are, of course, a little bit misguided, and usually think more about playing than actually playing.

Hence I think the changes proposed have merit, regardless of the probable truth of your statement.

[Old n Slow]

In most of my games I sweep the board at the cavalry stage -- I’m not fast enough to do it with the crusaders (but maybe it is also a function of map size), so howies & tanks don’t enter my playbook often (maybe once a year nowadays.)

For SP, a major problem I’ve seen is that the ai doesn’t use howies well (of course the ai doesn’t use a LOT of units well), so if you’re looking for a handicap, make one.

Construct “divisions” & buy/build your units with strict quotas -- 12 mechs, 2 tanks & 2 howies for an infantry division, 6 mechs, 8 tanks and 2 howies for an armor division -- one division can be transported with two transports, nobody sails until the boats are full. Howies are auxilery at the division level & can only be acquired (and “used”) with the accompanying forces.

Similar exist thoughts for MP -- or maybe ban/restrict their use.

The solution might be better served another way -- if the ai uses tanks better, upgrade the tanks. Let their bullets have 2x power & see what happens.

[Gatekeeper]

I've left the howitzer and armor units alone in my copy of Civ II, but have changed a few other things:

1. Spies: Movement is reduced to two, cost increased, and they must observe ZOCs. Even so, they're still incredibly powerful, IMHO.

2. Artillery: I gave this unit the ability to ignore city walls, and the AI makes good use of this new ability (prior to this modification, artillery was almost useless against walled cities on rivers [or not] that had anything above musketeers guarding them).

3. Shock troops: This is a unit I made from the "extras" that the Civ II designers included in the units file. This is an elite, expensive ground unit that has an attack of 14, and the ability to treat all terrain squares as flat land (i.e. alpine troops), and its hit and firepower points are upped. Shock troops, however, cannot ignore the effects of city walls.

4. Stingray: This is another custom unit I created from the "extras" file. It's basically a stealth transport unit capable of carrying four units, and has a base movement range of 7 squares, up to a maximum of 10 squares (if you get Magellan's Expedition and nuclear power). No attack power, but does have a defense of six. IOW, it's hard to find and does have a small chance of winning a battle if it is uncovered by another naval unit such as a submarine, destroyer or AEGIS cruiser (or literally touched by a battleship).

5. Cruise missiles: I made these less expensive, so the AI uses them more liberally now. Before, the AI stored them in cities and used them only against ships; now, it no longer stores them so much, but uses them against ships, armor, shock troops, spies and even against seaport cities that house naval units. Also, it isn't wise to stack other non-targeted units (such as howitzers) with targeted units, for obvious reasons ...

6. Diplomats: Made more expensive and must observe zones of control.

If I do anymore tweaking, it would be to make the shock troops capable of ignoring city walls.

Gatekeeper

[Gatekeeper]

I also have made "airships" from the extras included in Civ II. It becomes available with invention and becomes obsolete with the discovery of flight. This gives the game an aerial-type unit from the Middle Ages onward; it has an attack of five, defense of 1 and the movement of three (in the form of the ability of a helicopter ... it can stay aloft indefinitely, but grows progressively weaker if not returned to a city).

Gatekeeper

[ColdWizard]

Originally posted by Gatekeeper
5. Cruise missiles: I made these less expensive, so the AI uses them more liberally now. Before, the AI stored them in cities and used them only against ships; now, it no longer stores them so much, but uses them against ships, armor, shock troops, spies and even against seaport cities that house naval units. Also, it isn't wise to stack other non-targeted units (such as howitzers) with targeted units, for obvious reasons ...

that's interesting, what did you change the cost to?

[Six Thousand Year Old Man]

Originally posted by ColdWizard

that's interesting, what did you change the cost to?

Yes... can you give the A/D/M/Hp/Fp and the 0000010000100111 codes for all the changes?

As I said, I tweaked things for a while. Might be fun to do it again. Still trying to work on the supercarrier unit, so that a) it's worth building, and b) it won't instantly be sunk by cruise missiles

[Elephant]

Originally posted by Gatekeeper
I also have made "airships" from the extras included in Civ II. It becomes available with invention and becomes obsolete with the discovery of flight. This gives the game an aerial-type unit from the Middle Ages onward; it has an attack of five, defense of 1 and the movement of three (in the form of the ability of a helicopter ... it can stay aloft indefinitely, but grows progressively weaker if not returned to a city).

Sounds like a Zeppelin - useful for exploring the map. Perhaps drop the attack a bit but give it the ability to carry one ground unit? Since it has attack it will count against "units away" in Republic or Democracy: has this been a problem?

[ColdWizard]

i've made a zepplin-type unit, but gave it 0/0/3 iirc, with very long range. strictly recon-type of a role

[Gatekeeper]

ColdWizard, et al.:

Here are the specs for my "new and improved" cruise missile:

Cruise Msl., nil, 1, 12.,1, 18a,0d, 1h,3f, 4,0, 0, Roc, 001000000000000

As for making airships capable of carrying a single unit, would I just have to change the "hold" flag from "0" to "1"? Or would I have to toggle other options as well, such as "sea transport"? The only problem with that is the airship's domain is ground, not sea.

Gatekeeper

[ColdWizard]

you can't make aerial transports, one of the few flaws of civ2

[Marquis de Sodaq]

Originally posted by Scouse Gits
What's a howitzer?

SG[1]

Indeed! If I get to howitzers, it's been a poorly played game. If the AI gets them, it's been even worse.

But yes, they are a bit too much to defend against. One easy change would be to reduce the attack value from 12 to 8. Or reduce the hp - after all, knocking them out shouldn't be as hard as sinking a cruiser.

[Bob_Smurf42]

I made some new units a while ago...never quite finished, though:
Navy SEAL: sea, coastal
Rocket Soldier: air, range=0
Terminator: would take out fortified non-vet mech. inf. on grassland

[Elok]

Man, I remember back when I first started the game and was playing on chieftain level; I had howitzers, the persians were stuck with musketeers, and I was basically whooping rear...
Then the persians stole robotics-with a diplomat, the lucky ******s! They were throwing howies at me within 3 turns. I was not a happy camper. Man, that sucked.
This is irrelevant to the actual thread, I know; it's your fault for triggering my memory.

[Gatekeeper]

That's one thing that's always irritated me from time to time — when you have a Middle Ages culture use a diplomat to steal, say, robotics, and the next thing you know, they've managed to backward engineer the thing and are spitting out their own howitzers and building their own manufacturing plants.

Yeah, right. Using that analogy, we should have had "gee-whiz" technology by now from that downed alien saucer from Roswell, N.M.

Gatekeeper

[SCG]

ah, perhaps those 400 horsepower engines really are horse-powered and the reason they ignore city walls is because it takes so many horses and manpower that they simply overflow the walls (its also why they have the extra hit points - it takes a long time to kill all of them off )

[Elok]

I always assumed that the tech that gives you mining, irrigation and roads also gives you some form of magical nanotechnological duplicator left behind in the ruins of Atlantis and Shangri-la. Or maybe they just bribed some factory workers too.
Hmm, I'm a chieftain now. Only about 475 on-topic posts until I can change this stupid camel avatar into something cool...sigh.

[Bob_Smurf42]

32 posts-congrats.
I've got 49, but who's counting?

[Scouse Gits]

I don't think Ming appreciates too much talk about post counts. He is very good at reducing them!

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SG(2)

[Ben Kenobi]

I don't think he minds flexing his muscles. It keeps him in shape .

[atawa]

But to be honest, I tihnk a lot of people here spammed the 100 posts or so to get the custom avatar.

I know I did

[SCG]

in responce to the threadjacking, one of these days i may look into some sort of custom avatar since i apparently crossed the threshold a while ago... can't really think of a picture i want.

back slightly more on-topic, i was hoping someone might comment on my rationalization of the medieval howitzers, or even how the manufacturing plants would really be worker intensive assembly lines that would be lit by candles. otherwise, it really is hard to picture how the civilization had the tools to build the tools to build the items requiring robotics. I would guess that howitzers were an attempt to show how advanced tech really would be superior to earlier weapons, and just got a little overdone.

[Six Thousand Year Old Man]

Originally posted by Scouse Gits
I don't think Ming appreciates too much talk about post counts. He is very good at reducing them!

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SG(2)

A 10% PCR for the two parties in question would amount to 5 and 3 posts...

(... which is approximately a half day's production of the SG wonder )