Promotion merging

[Thalassicus]

Unit-attack bonuses are less useful for siege units than other units, since they mainly attack cities. They are more similar to Bombers in their effects and usage. Replace the 2 main siege promotion lines with the main Bomber promotions (bombardment and siege). This will make experienced siege units better at attacking cities, which makes sense, and the anti-unit promotion line won't suck as much for siege units (since it will combine accuracy & drill).

[GrantSP]

In a matter related to this, #207 , I found the PROMOTION_CITY_ASSAULT to be a penalty against some units with a -50 against DOMAIN_LAND. I'm sure this is for a reason but it eludes me at the moment. Why are siege units penalized in this manner? They already have the PROMOTION_LAND_PENALTY_II with the same -50 against DOMAIN_LAND applied to them.

[Thalassicus]

The effect shouldn't be duplicated. I intended to move it from city_assault to land_penalty. I fixed that now.

If you were asking why they have these effects, they increase the importance of promotions. This happens because of diminishing returns from additive multipliers. In other words, going from 1.5 to 2 is a bigger proportional increase (33%) than 3 to 3.5 (16%).

2.0 / 1.5 = 33% bonus from the siege promotion (mod) 3.5 / 3.0 = 16% bonus (unmodded)

.33 / .16 = mod version has 206% the power of unmodded version

I did this because the unmodded version is very misleading. It says it makes the unit 50% more powerful, but the actual increase is closer to 7% after we consider typical combat modifiers. It's drastically weaker than indicated on the tooltip.

Firaxis tried to fix siege units two years ago, but their method is less balanced than this one I've been using since vanilla.

[Thalassicus]

Promotions like Accuracy and Shock are basically identical. If they were the same promotion, we could not need to swap promotions when units upgrade from melee to ranged or back again. This would make things much less complicated for code and gameplay. Thoughts?

[GrantSP]

hmm...

I have seen a number of comments about Shock being out-of-place on Ranged units, especially on the Lancer. Admittedly since the Lancer has only a 1 tile range it is more in line with a Melee attack, but there is still that problem of what constitutes a ranged or melee attack. Gatling Gun anyone ? I think there is more in common with Accuracy & Barrage. Boosts are the same, they are just targeted on different terrain. I would have no problem with combining those, perhaps with a slightly reduced boost but in both terrain. That would mean 3 less options to look at and perhaps the Range promotion would come into play quicker?

[Thalassicus]

"Shock" is just a name. The name doesn't matter to me. If people feel it sounds weird, we can use a different name. :+1:

I'm thinking about the gameplay effects. The difference between Accuracy and Shock is Accuracy doesn't help defend. Human ranged units rarely come under attack in melee, and I think AIs can use all the help they can get, so giving their ranged units a defense bonus would help them survive.

I'm working on the Lancer inconsistencies. As you know, I consider anything that can shoot at range over other units a "ranged unit", and stuff that must attack in melee range a "melee unit." I'm in the camp of people who isn't bothered by range-1 "melee" riflemen. I recognize not everyone sees it that way, though, so I'm changing Lancers to satisfy that group of people.

[GrantSP]

Yeah I see you have already swapped Dragoons and Lancers around.

The way I see it Shock & Drill and Accuracy & Barrage are the comparable promotions. Accuracy & Shock are the open equivalents of Drill & Barrage.

So if you want to merge Shock & Accuracy, the MELEE & RANGED promotions that do basically the same, then we need to do likewise with Drill & Barrage.

I don't have a problem with the melee and ranged promotions being the same, but the difference on terrain is a weird one for me. The terrain the target is in shouldn't have a bearing on the attackers accuracy/strength, it should though have a Bonus for defense on the target to counter the attacker. That isn't the point of the issue though, sorry. There are other similar promotions like Buffalo Loins or Buffalo Chest that have a bearing on this subject. Do we make adjustments to these also?