Why do you receive a combat penalty as a defender choosing to defend on a river? This makes no sense. If they are melee they would have to swim the river if the wanted to engage you.

I feel like allies should be able to enter a battle together, for example: I want to break the siege of an allied city. Alas, I am only able to wait outside the borders of the siege until it is decided, then siege it back. This seems a bit silly in my opinion, however I'm sure it's not the easiest thing to program.

You may already be aware of this and have it fixed for the full game, but in the beta the Russian UU is now just a worse version of generic dragoons after the move and fire change. Numbers will have to be adjusted.

The cossacks move and fire ability is also bugged right now. They can not move after shooting.

Combat in general felt pretty good, with terrain often playing a big role, in one battle I engaged the enemy carelessly leading me to be deployed in a valley choke point. My units had next to no room to deploy and got peppered by arrows from above. I would have lost outright but was able to survive long enough to bring reinforcements in a flanking position and thus managed to save that battle.

Never did get to try any naval warfare though. I never saw a single AI ship the entire game. I did see a couple embarked units once or twice though.

If you upgrade your era, you lose access to siege engines of your previous era. This doesn't make sense. You still know how to make a trebuchet, and it's probably still useful against the very same defenses they had one turn ago. Also, siege engines can only attack walls if there is a defender to attack. I should be able to hit the walls regardless of the presence of a defender.

While in the Victor open dev I mostly played games with very little combat, this time around, the AI seemed a lot more aggressive and I was caught in two wars that were actually very fun and challenging (on empire difficulty).

The only thing I noticed during my second war is that the AI had mostly produced ranged cavalery units (I think it was the huns or the mongols' units) but had very little infantry. 

Undernier wrote:

While in the Victor open dev I mostly played games with very little combat, this time around, the AI seemed a lot more aggressive and I was caught in two wars that were actually very fun and challenging (on empire difficulty).

The only thing I noticed during my second war is that the AI had mostly produced ranged cavalery units (I think it was the huns or the mongols' units) but had very little infantry. 

That's because the huns or mongols horse archers are special cavalry that can clone themselves. It's normal that they have armies with only those.

shockwave1812 wrote:

Why do you receive a combat penalty as a defender choosing to defend on a river? This makes no sense. If they are melee they would have to swim the river if the wanted to engage you.

Defend behind the river, not on it. The attacker, who has to sit on the river to cross it,  is penalized for crossing the river to reach you. That's how it works IRL anyway.

Combat was very pleasant this iteration. The rules about reinforcement should a lot more clear though. Sometimes I could use the units, sometimes not during seemingly same circumstances. Also battles blocking so much of the terrain that sometimes you can't pass with other units sucks very much. I have also managed to lose units from reinforcements because, I guess, I have not used all of them - just some of them from a stack. It was very, very surprising to see that I won a battle and thus lost 6 units. Gone. Poof. Not on the map.

Also it seems to me because of the tech pace sometimes having good enough units to fight against your enemies is absurdly hard. But that's for another thread.

Having just finished a game on Civilization difficulty, I can say that the combat was very satisfying, at least when I was fighitng at tech parity or from behind.

I had a city that wtihstodd several sieges, probably scoring 50+ unit deaths over the course of the mid-game. I managed to win against gunpowder units with stacks of hoplites through the creative use of terrain and combat bonues, combined with some human wave tactics. Settling defensively and building walls was the only reason that city held.

The turning point of battles becoming unintersting to me was the moment I got "Gunner" units (the Khmer EU in this case). This trivialized most battles once I got a few of them, since nobody else managed to compete. Unlocking them was a godsend however, as it let my replace my hilariously obsolete hoplite army with something that could actually defeat muskets. Getting my own gun unit through an event, almost 40 turns before I had the tech for them sealed the deal.

Ranged units should not be getting the river penaly on attack. It makes no sense, and also makes them much harder to place than they need to be.

It does seem to me like units have traits that are not displayed in their tooltip. Milita for example, gain the +6 bonus while inside a friendly city, but that is not made clear from their unit card. Neither is the apparent ability of horde units to attack without taking retaliation damage.

Except in this game the river always splits the hex, doesn't run along the edge of it. If I am defending I should get to choose where I would make my stand within the hex and it would always be on the opposite side of the river the attackers are entering from.  Choosing to stand behind the hex also doesn't do any good when the flag is placed inside the a river hex. 

gunnergoz wrote:

shockwave1812 wrote:

Why do you receive a combat penalty as a defender choosing to defend on a river? This makes no sense. If they are melee they would have to swim the river if the wanted to engage you.

Defend behind the river, not on it. The attacker, who has to sit on the river to cross it,  is penalized for crossing the river to reach you. That's how it works IRL anyway.

MaiFlow wrote:

Ranged units should not be getting the river penaly on attack. It makes no sense, and also makes them much harder to place than they need to be.

Seconded! I'd also like a way for ranged units to start a fight from a distance since the battlefield often cuts off clifftops that I would like my archers to offer support from, even when starting the battle directly at the cliff's base.

How do reinforcements work? I had 2 units beside each other, an enemy on a hex bordering both, yet when I started combat, only one was pulled in with no reinforcements.

TheAtm wrote:

How do reinforcements work? I had 2 units beside each other, an enemy on a hex bordering both, yet when I started combat, only one was pulled in with no reinforcements.

There is a technology called Organized Warfare. Its early in the tech tree and allows for reinforcing your own units.

I really like those changes and the mentioned ideas seem promising. Combat in Humankind is very interesting and has a great strategic depth to it.

The one thing that I felt was a bit frustrating is that the upgrades from scouts to horseman comes a bit late, scouts basically just die off if it comes to serious combat, especially if there are aggressive IP nearby. So madding a unit between scouts and horsemen would make the transition smoother.

Also aggressive IP seem a bit over-powered in the early game. It is really hard to deal with the first wave of them. Maybe let them start with weaker units. If I see aggressive IP I can't run away since they will chase me, and I can't engage in battle since they are waaaay stronger than scouts and I won't have anything else researched to replace scouts with. Also, make letting them stick closer to their home would be good. Sometimes its weird to see them travel to the other side of the continent.

Overall thought combat was a nice improvement in this build. I would say the one major thing that I hope is addressed is line of sight. There are many times when I deploy or move a ranged unit I think I have line of sight on a particular enemy unit when it turns out I do not. It would be really helpful to have some sort of UI tool for ranged units that tells you what tiles it can hit in its current position as well as a preview for tiles it can hit if it moves to a particular tile.