19-04-2002 22:23									#1
	Artillery effectivenss on units with added HP's Got spare money?

Ok I want to give gunpowder/modern units an HP bonus so they dont lose to more ancient units. However, i'm not sure what to do with my artillery. If all veteran modern units now have say, 10 hit points after a +6 HP bonus, then artillery, battleships, or whatever unit using bombard for example will now need 5 turns to wear that unit down to 0 HP (assuming a rate of fire of 2), as opposed to 2 turns if the units didnt have any HP bonus.

So obviously, one needs to increase the effectiveness of artillery type units to make sure that they are still proportionally just as effective against units with increased HP's as they were before such units were given increased HP's, but my question is how. Right now i am figuring changing the rate of fire for all artillery units higher than cannon to 5, and changing the cannon's rate of fire to 3 but im not sure how well that will work. This is due to the fact that it might unbalance the game as ancient era units (without any HP bonus) will now be much more vulnerable to this more powerful artillery. Keep in mind i'm just trying to make sure artillery type units are still effective against more modern type units with added HP bonuses, but i dont want to unbalance the game by having the first person who gets to cannon to have some sort of a super weapon which can knock out all ancient era units with ease.

SO CAN ANYONE HELP ME, HOW DO I ADDRESS THIS DILEMMA OF HP BONUSES VERSUS ARTILLERY EFFECTIVENESS???

	19-04-2002 22:51									#2
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You'll have to decide what numbers make the advances flow fairly from one to another.

Try stepping it up a little more slowly. Add +1 to industrial units, and +2 to modern. Then add one more rate of fire to a cannon, and 2 to modern bombarders. See if this transitions well. I think you'll probably find a fair balance to be +2/+4 hps and +1-2/+3-4 RoF for the industrial/modern units to be a relatively fair balance.


*Fitz scratches his head and tries to remember when cannons and artillery are aquired*

Maybe +1 Rof for cannons, when industrial units get +2 Hps. Aren't then in the late medeval period?

Edit: As an initial test, why don't you add +1 Hp per era to all units (ie +1 medeval, +2 industrial, +3 modern) and +1 Rof per period of the unit. Be aware that this makes bombarders much more effective at destroying terrain and city infrastructure though, so you'll have to add defensive to buildings and improvements and city pop (if you can).

	19-04-2002 22:52									#3
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I'm not sure if Korn did anything to address this in his Blitz mod. Check out that thread. I know he increased hit points for all units.

	20-04-2002 05:39									#4
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Thanks, I'll try it and see how it works out. But what sucks with the lack of an editor is the fact that i have to play a whole game in order to see how changes to all the various units will affect combat, rather than just setting up a few brief test games with an editor to see how effective various units are against each other. Oh well, maybe when version 1.9999999 comes out ...