Yes for sure, I was gonna come back and flesh that out further but I kinda forgot about it so thanks for reminding me. Your list is a good start.
Some kind of building boost (+10% health?)
was my initial thought since a defensive bonus would fit with the civ. It would also be reasonable to have it apply to ships as well since they’re basically floating buildings.
Armour boost is also an interesting one, but it would be tricky to implement given that different units would probably need to get different armour types for it to be balanced. That would make it a little too complex for my liking. It would also need to be at least a 10% boost to be on par with the Haud Chief.
Another ability I’d like to have is for the War Chief to be able to work at the Potlatch Plaza. A chief’s display of wealth and generosity was a central part of potlatches. I’d probably keep this locked behind a card though.
I don’t know if I’d want to base it off such a late development since they wouldn’t have been armed like this before about 1800. It’s also hard to say if the Russians were particularly well equipped on this far extreme of their empire. Outgunning some backwoods Cossacks and their Aleut conscripts might not be all it’s cracked up to be.
That’s a good start at visualizing it, but a little bit backwards. A better way is to look at what units you’re facing and whether or not you have counters to that. For example, not having Musketeers is not a “gap” if the role is covered by top tier ranged cav and melee heavy infantry.
Your categories are also too visual and don’t necessarily reflect function. You have Club Warriors and Plumed Spearman in different categories despite being functionally the same.
I’d say heavy infantry categories should be anti-cav (pikes), generalist (Halbs), elite (AoE units), line infantry (musks), and counter. Heavy cavalry categories also need more granularity. They should be anti-inf (lancer), anti-light inf (most Asian cav), generalist (hussar), elite (AoE units), raider (opris), and counter (the ranged ones are so rare and weird they should probably be reworked anyways).
Arrow Knights and Mantlets are also not at all the same role. And Flamethrowers are not artillery, they’re tagged more like Mantlets.
This is intentional due to the existence of such a division in the game (separate tags for pikeman and hand infantry). Of course, the differences are not big (e.g. Harquebusier has ranged attack penalty against Plumed Spearman but not against Club Warrior) and their general use is almost the same, but it is also not the case that each lowest-level category has to have completely different role than anything else, and that is why there are also separated intermediate categories.
In this case, both units are simply melee heavy infantry (intermediate category), hence their role is similar. It is just like archaic (foot archer tag in the game) and gunpowder (rifle infantry tag in the game) “skirmishers”, both play similar role (with minor differences in ROF, range etc.) of ranged light infantry. And with that separation it is also easier to present nations that have units from both of these subcategories, such as Spaniards (Tercio and Rodelero).
What you are talking about still can be read from such a table, as long as you know which category corresponds to what. For better visibility of unit counters, a table variant with a changed column order may also be created. Then the units would be grouped not according to what they are but what they fight against. In this variant, the weaknesses of individual rosters would be more exposed. Classic variant would be more clear without some weird, non-standard cases that contradict the basic principle of rock-paper-scissors, like light infantry to fight other light infantry (scissors that beat scissors) etc.
That’s a nice idea.
You are of course right, just like rams and petards are not infantry. However, since they de facto fulfill similar function, they were assigned that way for simplicity.
Yeah, Mantlets are one of those non-standard units that are hard to compare… I put them there because they are tagged identically to the Huaraca, although you are right that the low range, more hp and lack of multiplers against artillery are enough to change their gameplay function and maybe it was too far-reaching simplification. But how to categorize them then? Maybe a new category of siege units - “mobile shields” (that’s the real role of Mantlets) as a gateway for new units of this type in the future (e.g. Cossack Tabor)?
By all the logic of the game, it is an oversight that Club Warriors are not tagged as pikemen. They follow the pikeman template of low base damage and high multipliers as opposed to higher base damage and lower multipliers like halbs.
The distinction is more functional than tag based. The pikeman tag is also rather recent, and I’d argue it’s unnecessary. It only is used by ranged heavy cav which are up there for the most convoluted and poorly designed units in need of a rework.
They’re pretty much a ranged damage sponge. Grenadiers and Flamethrowers are similar in the fact that they can tank a lot of ranged damage, but they’re more focused on dishing out damage instead.