Why the Citizen-Soldier Concept is Wrong

[Thorfinn the Shallow Minded]

First, I wish to say that it is not entirely wrong; in fact it is a unique and innovative system I appreciate.

 

The concept is not inherently flawed, but there are cultures in which it is an easy way to misconstrue the actual social and military systems present.  It should not be removed entirely, but it should be changed and adapted better reflect the cultures.  

 

The Athenians, Romans, Iberians, Gauls, Britons, Persians, Mauryans, and Spartans all remain fairly viably accurate though differentiating Persian levies from actual citizens and Spartan Champions from other champions could lead to greater diversity and depth to the meta and historicity.  The remaining have problems though.

 

Macedonians, Seleucids, and Ptolemies all maintained professional forces that were employed outside of a few exceptions, but those can be exceptions to better diversify the three.  There still could be citizen soldiers, for the military colony maintained retired soldiers that were called Kleruchoi if I am not mistaken.  These could act as experience tier II or III units, not being tremendously reliable from an economic standpoint, but capable of providing protection while simultaneously building and collecting from strategic yet disputed areas.  

 

Carthage also lacked many citizen soldiers, and the depiction of mercenaries as citizens not only for Carthage but for other Civilisations is peculiar inaccuracy.  Mercenaries could be expensive and competent, but also have short training times to compensate.  Making them at least Champion-esque would be a good idea.  

 

These are simple things to alter, and any economic setbacks they would have could be remedied by the employment of slaves.  Although I do not claim that slavery was necessarily a justly conducted institution, it was a very present part of Ancient life.  In the period of Imperial Rome, for instance, it could be that even one fifth of the population was enslaved.  Making these a way to channel labour in a new way would lead to interesting strategic implications.

Edited March 28, 2016 by feneur
Removed distracting formatting

[Phalanx]

Well, I do agree with you, especially with the example of Carthage, but this is a scenario where historical accuracy must give way to ease of gameplay and game development.  This would be a very hard feature to change, especially at this stage of the game, and would drastically increase the already steep learning curve of the game.  I do agree, that it is not entirely accurate, but thats the trade-off to a good game unfortunately. Just look at Ryse, and that wasnt even a good game!

[Lion.Kanzen]

Can be nice propose a little redesign, remember some accuracy is hard to balance...

 

its can can be the nice starting to a diversity in the game.  

[wowgetoffyourcellphone]

I have tried to do something about the Carthaginians, but I have not playtest it a lot. 

 

I give Carthage citizen-soldier (Liby-Phoenician Spearman, Libyan Skirmisher, Punic Cavalry) a traeining limit of 30 per Civic Center. Now, they train very fast (5 seconds), cost food and wood, and cost only 1 population. In Delenda Est, infantry normal cost 2 pop and cavaly 3 pop, but for Carthage citizen-soldiers they cost 1 pop, but have training limit. They can build building, gather, resources, etc.

 

Carthage mercenaries from embassies cost normal population costs (2 or 3, unlike other merceanriy), but cost metal instead of food (like other mercenaries). Unlike Carthage Citizens and other civ's mercenaries, Carthage can train almost unlimited number of the mercs, but of course they can't gather resources (but can build military buildings). It is interesting changes.

[causative]

I have two claims.  My first claim is that citizen soldiers are much less important than champion units in battle.  My second claim is that it's not worth spending metal on citizen soldiers.  I make these claims because champion units are supreme, and cost metal.

Among good players in multiplayer, most armies consist of large numbers of champions.  Citizen soldiers sometimes provide a little extra damage in battles between armies of champions, and are important to help garrison ships, fortresses, towers, and civic centers.  As fighters by themselves, though, they are not worth much, especially as champion counts rise.  50 or 100 infantry champions can slaughter huge amounts of citizen soldiers with minimal or no losses.  Almost all citizen-soldiers have low HP and very low pierce armor, and therefore they can't walk into a fortified and garrisoned enemy base without immediately dying.

All champions cost metal, and metal is scarce.  The limiting factor on how many champions you can make is the amount of metal you have; by the time you are making champions you usually have plenty of food and wood.  Therefore, any citizen soldier that costs metal, prevents you from making more champions, which overall weakens your army.

The only exception to this I've seen is the Spartan Skiritai Commandos, which only cost 10 metal and have extremely good stats for a citizen-soldier, so that it sometimes makes sense to make them.  Still, an army of Skiritai Commandos can't stand up to an army of champion infantry.

 

If you want distinctions between citizen-soldiers to matter more in 0ad, perhaps the game needs a low limit on how many champions you can have at one time, such as 25.  But then we need a solution to the problem where citizen-soldiers can't approach garrisoned fortresses or CCs without being slaughtered.

[Zeta1127]

The way meta-games develop has always frustrated me, since I almost exclusively play skirmish, I can usually get away with playing a completely different way than most players in a multiplayer setting. Which never helped me in StarCraft, since most people on Battle.net, unless they are in the ladder, only play custom games nowadays, so I was never in a position to learn how to play "proper" StarCraft. The massive 100 population boom into champions play style in 0 A.D. I keep hearing about is alien to me. Age of Empires has apparently developed a vaguely similar meta-game, at least in regards to the population boom aspect, but I don't play that way, because I can get away with strategically located garrisoned fortresses with cavalry to deal with siege weapons. The AI could attack an unguarded flank, but if I do it right, there won't be an unguarded flank to exploit. As much as I like the idea of fighting armies in the field, I rarely do that, because the AI almost cannot handle my most from the least approach to army composition, where I have a small army of the best troops that covers my siege engines. In 0 A.D., this usually consists of spearmen supported by archers and skirmishers, since swordsmen are so much more squishy, which makes me far less effective with the Romans and other civilizations where swordsmen are the default melee infantry. Combined with my defensive approach, and I can pretty much outlast the AI, because I don't spend all of my resources like a good little RTS player is supposed to.

The Spartan Skiritai Commandos are actually technically Champion Swordsmen with the elite rank to differentiate them from conventional Citizen-Soldiers and Champions.

[wowgetoffyourcellphone]

20 hours ago, causative said:

If you want distinctions between citizen-soldiers to matter more in 0ad, perhaps the game needs a low limit on how many champions you can have at one time, such as 25.  But then we need a solution to the problem where citizen-soldiers can't approach garrisoned fortresses or CCs without being slaughtered.

This solution is to use siege weapon.

[wowgetoffyourcellphone]

11 hours ago, Zeta1127 said:

The Spartan Skiritai Commandos are actually technically Champion Swordsmen with the elite rank to differentiate them from conventional Citizen-Soldiers and Champions.

Yeah, Skiritai are like bridge between CS and Champs. I like this.

[causative]

2 hours ago, wowgetoffyourcellphone said:

This solution is to use siege weapon.

Very nice, except that siege weapons can very easily be destroyed if they don't have an army capable of accompanying them into the storm of arrows!  You can't assault an entrenched position - even one that has no walls - without using champs that can withstand arrow fire.

Garrisoning your non-champion army inside the siege weapons is no solution either, because they have to ungarrison to defend the siege weapon against the attackers, and then the arrows kill them.

Edited March 30, 2016 by causative

[wowgetoffyourcellphone]

11 minutes ago, causative said:

Very nice, except that siege weapons can very easily be destroyed if they don't have an army capable of accompanying them into the storm of arrows!  You can't assault an entrenched position - even one that has no walls - without using champs that can withstand arrow fire.

Garrisoning your non-champion army inside the siege weapons is no solution either, because they have to ungarrison to defend the siege weapon against the attackers, and then the arrows kill them.

Wall Turret and Fortress arrow range should not outdistance catapults. This is very simple change. Also, incrwase pierce armor of battering rams (or add techs to increase armor, I prefer this).

[causative]

If catapult range was increased to maybe 100 meters, so that you have space to put soldiers and walls in front of the catapult out of range of the enemy fortress, then attacking a fortress without champions would be workable for those civilizations that have catapults.  However, not all civilizations have catapults.

Battering rams have enough pierce armor as they are - they don't die to arrows.  It's the citizen-soldiers trying to protect them that would die to arrows.  Rams need champs to protect them.

[av93]

The problem of C-S for me is that makes rushes very hard. I would move ranged units to 2 phase, so in first you could have a rps system like that: spearman>wood towers> cav skirmishers>spearman.

Also I would reduce champs armor and limit them, and make the rams uncapturable

[Palaiogos]

Yes, but ranged units make it so that people could have a defense against champs. I just spam ranged units against champs and back them up with my okay phalanxes as the Seleukids.

[Mr.Monkey]

I basically agree with everything that causative said in his first post, citizen-soldiers are not worth is unless you want to rush someone, champions are just so much more efficient. The only citizen-soldier I would ever use in battle are the Mauryan archers or the Briton slingers (Or any counterparts in other civs) to give an extra damage boost to another army of champions. Maybe sometimes I would use cheap ranged cavalry to raid someone's trading line if it is a desperate game, but that is it. 

[Dade]

20 hours ago, causative said:

If catapult range was increased to maybe 100 meters, so that you have space to put soldiers and walls in front of the catapult out of range of the enemy fortress, then attacking a fortress without champions would be workable for those civilizations that have catapults.  However, not all civilizations have catapults.

Battering rams have enough pierce armor as they are - they don't die to arrows.  It's the citizen-soldiers trying to protect them that would die to arrows.  Rams need champs to protect them.

Ive had a little research and found this article. Seems like Roman's catapults could easily reach 300 meters O_o

[Palaiogos]

3 hours ago, Dade said:

Ive had a little research and found this article. Seems like Roman's catapults could easily reach 300 meters O_o

True, but we would probably have to make the maps really huge to balance the difference. Also what will the oxybeles range be, because they were probably 200-250 meters? That won't be good for balance.

Edit: Change oxybeles to litho bolos

Edited March 31, 2016 by Palaiogos
Changing of weapon.