It should be a percentage increase at each mil tech tier that gives mil tactics. Right now the early techs matter wayyyyyy too much because it's a flat 0.25 at each tier. Going from mil 3 to mil 4 gives a full 50% increase while going from 31 to 32 gives a measly 9% increase. It makes the early game a race to mil 4 so that you can stackwipe equal-sized armies...
Mil tech increasing mil tactics needs to be smoothed out
- Thread starter durbal
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The early technology rush was more fun than the late game where technology doesn't seem to matter any more, though. I agree that the current math is a bit off, but I don't think a purely smooth progression would be very interesting either.
It's a good point. Early advancements in warfare were important, but so were later advances. As it stands, military tactics impact land battles less and less with each improvement. It's a really good point in fact, I hadn't realised this was the case.
I don't full understand your reasoning. If early game MIL tech is "more fun" and late game MIL tech doesn't matter, why would you not want to increase the importance of late game tech? The increase of the early techs is not affected by the increase of later techs.
I do want to increase the importance of late game tech, but I doubt that smoothing the power curve is the most interesting way to do it.
I'm not sure you fully understand the huge disparity early game mil techs with tactics boosts have. You can routinely stackwipe an equal army because you have mil tech 4 and they are 3. Even up to mil tech 8 or so the difference is usually insurmountable.
Having military tactics from mil 4 reduces the number of casualties taken by 50% when fighting against mil tech 3. Literally 50% -- as in you take half damage. It's insane.
while the tactics gets less value in later tech. The shock/fire modifiers gets in turn more value in the later techs. So I guess that balance a bit out.
No they don't. It's not a linear upward increase relatively (some tiers give a big boost, others small) and it's largely mitigated by other modifiers like unit and general pips. The increases also matter a lot less since, for example, cavalry shock even at mil 6 gives only a 20% boost over previous mil techs -- and that's only for one phase, making mil 6 cavalry effectively only 10% better or so.
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No. It reduces the number of casualties taken by 33%. Literally 33% -- as in you take two thirds damage.
And yes, 33% is still insane. I prefer small jumps at about 15-20% damage reduction, that can be clearly felt but not that overwhelming, which is about what the level 7 technology does.
Cavalry's damage output is concentrated in the shock phase, and especially so in early game. Therefore a 20% boost for shock damage is nearly the same as a 20% boost for all damage.
I like a 20% increase as well. I also like 25% (which is what tech 7 actually gives). So why shouldn't later techs be brought up to the same level? I make the increase at 32 to be a shade under 7.7%.
Shock and fire modifiers for units in later techs certainly play a big part as PhoenixG said, but as durbal also said, they are not given out evenly, and it's also often at different techs to tactics. Tech 32 gives only 7.7% tactics but also a hefty boost of +2 artillery fire; that is a strong tech level. But poor little tech 24 only gives 9.1% tactics and +2 combat width. No other modifiers. Perhaps not as strong a tech level as it may have first appeared.
I really see no downside to giving later techs more importance this way. Whether it is interesting or not I don't think matters very much. Sure it would be nice, but what matters is whether the effect of the change will be positive.
Sorry, you deal 50% more damage compared to the enemy. Worded wrong in my earlier post. Hence the stackwipes.
I found that I completely misunderstood the OP's proposal. Indeed, I agree with what he said now.
Another way to fix the curve problem is to re-design the formula of how tactics works. For example, for now we use the tactics as the divisor/denominator of the damage taken. So a jump from 0.5 to 0.75 would be 33% less damage taken. However if we re-design the formula to use (1.75^tactics) as the denominator instead, each of the 0.25 tactics increment would bring about 13% damage reduction, multiplicative. This way they can leave the existing numbers untouched and makes us to feel the tech difference.
The 4>3 mil tech advantage is very needed for some difficult starts, so removing or nerfing it would make those starts even tougher. Certain threshold levels of tech are nice since you can plan you plays around them, and if the increase of stats between tech levels was a flat progression it would make tech much less meaningful gameplay-wise. Also there were certain military advancements that literally changed the way wars were being fought, and things like tech 3 vs tech 4 represent those to an extent (albeit in a very imperfect way).
But that would be another nerf to the Ottomans that could lead to heated arguments in the forum! 
(They always reach tech 4 first ,when compared to their neighbours, because of their god-like starting monarch).
All jokes aside, I would honestly prefer if big leaps like this happened more frequently throughout the game, to make lagging in military tech more painful, as I agree it is not as important late-game.
(They always reach tech 4 first ,when compared to their neighbours, because of their god-like starting monarch).
All jokes aside, I would honestly prefer if big leaps like this happened more frequently throughout the game, to make lagging in military tech more painful, as I agree it is not as important late-game.
As I said in my first post, simply increasing the effects of the late game techs has no effect whatsoever on the early techs.
How does increasing the effect of a tech make it in any way less meaningful? The exact opposite is true.
One problem with some military techs being much more important than others is that the AI may not know anything about this system, whereas a player does. A player might rush a tech that gives Tactics then let themselves fall behind a bit to conserve MIL later, but an AI will treat every military tech the same. Thus the AI will waste MIL on less important techs and under-value more important ones. This could be a potential problem with the sudden jumps in Tactics unless a dev can confirm that the AI accounts for this.