Currently the counter system comprises of 5 main categories that (more or less) equally counter each other.
These are:
artillery
heavy_inf
light_inf
hand_cav
range_cav
It’s all fine and dandy but you might have noticed that 2 groups of units don’t fit into this system quite well and are notoriously clunky and hard to balance: grenadiers and culverins.
I propose to expand the system to 7 categories in order to include them, in the following system:
field_art = basic anti-infantry artillery (falconets, heavy cannons etc)
light_art = counter artillery (culverins, siege elephants etc)
assault_inf = grenadiers and other siege oriented infantry (US Marines, Huaracas etc)
assault_inf could also be used for club wielding infantry (native Nootka, japanese Yamabushi, inca Maceman, Lakota clubman etc) that currently are considered heavy infantry but don’t really fit in with pike/spear wielding units.
The counter graph you designed is very aestheticly pleasing and i see the appeal.
Im not sure how i feel about grenadiers countering cav and light inf here, while losing against lineinfantry. Throwing grenades at horses sounds a bit counterintuive for me. Also would dealing siege damage with area of effect not automatically make them good against tightly packed heavy inf?
Also curious what you propose for humbaraci. What unit would a non-musk civ like china build against humbaraci?
I like the idea of light artillery gaining some use against heavy inf. Especially for india this could be great i think. Would take away some uniqueness of light cannons and flaming arrows though.
China have access to heavy_inf with the Qiang and Changdao. Those would have appropriate bonuses to make sure they win against assault_inf.
can be resolved wit a x0.5 bonus against heavy_inf
I see your point but range_cav already beat all types of artillery as well as hand_cav so if we don’t want that category to be overtuned we need to give it some counters. The only other possible candidate for countering them would be one of the artillery types but I would argue that would be even MORE counter-intuitive than having elite commando-like infantry beating them. Plus it works better in the more general infantry → cavalry → artillery → infantry counter system.
The way I see it, flaming arrows and light cannons already are supposed to fill the “culverin” role so I think they would be a perfect fit for the light_art category.
This is a chart of how it should be not necessarily how it is.
If there’s no line between them it is because they trade equally when matched with the same pop.
The counter system makes more sense when you break it down into
(melee) Cav < anticav < skirms < cav
and then seperately
infantry < artillery < cavalry
Trying to place every type of cavalry and infantry into a seperate spot just gets confusing and makes things look worse than they actually are.
Of course there are exceptions, but a few units here and there as hybrids (lancers being somewhere between cav and artillery) or as specialists (culverins) don’t need a rewrite of the whole system.
all melee cavalry are in the hand_cav category. Whether they are equipped with a lance or a sword should influence stuff like range or attack speed or the power of the bonuses but not what they fundamentally counter or not. Heavy or Light should only influence their speed and/or level of armor/resistance.
Yes, this would imply that ALL civs would need to be given AT LEAST one unit of each category in order to be viable. I would argue that light cannons and captured mortars should be made available to Lakota as to cover their artillery needs.
Grenadiers are heavy infantry [can be counter with artillery, skimirsher, cav or combination of them]
Culverins are artillery effective only to other artillery. Can be countered by itself or by combining cav + light cav
