I find it pretty annoying that most of the promotions available in the game are relatively useless. In every game I play, I will have a handful of niche units with obscure promotions (mostly from fighting barbarians), and the remaining 98% of my troops have the standard CR, CG, etc. So I was thinking about editing my XML files to make them more useful. I posted this in strategy because it's not so much about the modding as it is trying to figure out what would make these promotions useful and enjoyable without being overpowering.

Does anyone have any comments on the following thoughts/ideas? Maybe there are some practical strategies using these promotions that I just haven't thought of.


---- Formation, Ambush, Charge ----
I like all the anti-unit-type promotions for the flavor, and I use them more than I probably should. I never understood why these require C2 or D2 while the others require only C1 or D1 though. I don't think it would be too detrimental to mounted units (i.e. too good for spears/pikes), since an extra 25% on top of their innate 100% and low base strength won't be overpowered. It would be good for some underutilized units (like muskets) to make them more potent and flexible stack defenders.

---- Blitz ----
I was thinking about changing the prerequisite from C3 to C2, leaving the Military Science requirement. In my mind, this is really only a helpful promotion when cleaning up stacks that have already been reduced to paste by siege or airstrikes. Otherwise you are almost guaranteed to be injured after the first battle. By making this promotion accessible, you could include some mounted units with your CR stack to help clean up -- their two moves are wasted by tagging along with the cannons, but they redeem themselves in the cleanup phase.

---- March ----
Like Blitz, I'd like to reduce the prerequisite to C2. I really like the idea of having March armies, but it's just not useful when it's only available to elite units. This way, it's actually feasible to get a whole army with March out in the field, or at least give this to your stack defenders. Do you think this would be overpowered?

---- Commando ----
Have you ever actually given a unit this promotion? I haven't, and it seems like such a fun one, too. I would like to change this to be available after C3. That way an Aggressive and/or Charismatic leader would feasibly be able to field pillaging stacks with Commando. Sounds pretty fun, don't you think? It's not available to siege, so it wouldn't allow for ridiculously overpowered conquests, right?

---- Mobility ----
I'd probably change this to be available after Flanking 1, like Sentry. Even then, it doesn't seem useful enough to merit taking the promotion very often.

---- Morale ----
Seems to be the least useful of the warlord promotions. It's okay if you have some points left over after taking Medic 3, but even then it's just the least useless thing to take, maybe not even as good as Leadership. Would this be wildly overpowered if it didn't require a warlord and was available after C3? Maybe after C4? It'd be cool to actually be able to use 2-move melee/gunpowder units or 3-move mounted units, but a single unit with more movement than the rest of the stack is no more than a novelty. I would probably choose to not allow this on siege units. What do you think, too powerful?

---- Guerrilla, Woodsman ----
I've been dissatisfied with these since Vanilla. It doesn't make sense to me why the bonus is only for defense in levels 1 and 2. And then when they made the level 3 promotions, they threw in some gimmicky bonus that has nothing to do with the terrain, just to make it "worth it" to go down these lines at all, and so the free promotions on jaguars and gallics are not worthless. I think I will probably make levels 1 and 2 grant attack bonuses and just remove the level 3 promotions completely. That's just me though, I bet a lot of folks will disagree.

---- City Raider ----
Obviously CR needs no improvement. I think I might allow mounted and gunpowder units to take CR1 (not 2 or 3) though. This might make knights/cuirassiers/cavalry too powerful, but horse archers could definitely use a boost. And allowing CR1 (maybe 2 and 3 also) for gunpowder would reduce the temptation to use that nonsensical (i.e. unrealistic) strategy of building maces when you could be building rifles, then upgrading them with CR.

---- Navigation ----
I might make this available for ships from the get-go, instead of requiring transports to take a useless promotion (Flanking) first. Galleys and triremes get so few experience points anyway, I feel like they deserve the extra movement point if they survive the coin-flip combat. Maybe I will reduce the movement points of post-Drydock ships to compensate for the easy Navigation. Also, do you think the AI will know how to use this?



If I made all these changes, it would result in a nicely organized (to me, anyway) system in which all the anti-something promotions are available after C1, the "general combat" promotions (March, Blitz, Amphibious) after C2, and the movement promotions (Commando, maybe Morale) after C3.

Does anyone know if the AI will get confused/broken by making changes like these? I have no idea how it chooses what promotions to assign to which units. I'm sure the changes would be more helpful to human players than AI's, but I don't mind. It'd definitely be fun to be able to make some really versatile/fast/effective pillaging stacks, since it's usually faster and easier to just take the cities outright.

Changes to promotions will need to be made very carefully as they can greatly impact the balance of certain traits and UUs and units in general. The only change I would make is to allow the Drill and Combat lines to open the same promotions, i.e. Drill 4 allowing Commando.


---- Formation, Ambush, Charge ----
I like all the anti-unit-type promotions for the flavor, and I use them more than I probably should. I never understood why these require C2 or D2 while the others require only C1 or D1 though. I don't think it would be too detrimental to mounted units (i.e. too good for spears/pikes), since an extra 25% on top of their innate 100% and low base strength won't be overpowered. It would be good for some underutilized units (like muskets) to make them more potent and flexible stack defenders.

Charge is available after C1, its usually a waste of a promo anyway.
The problem with the bold bit being, that if all units could counter these specialist assault units very early then counter units like Spearmen, Pikes, and Anti-tanks would be much less useful.

---- Blitz ----
I was thinking about changing the prerequisite from C3 to C2, leaving the Military Science requirement. In my mind, this is really only a helpful promotion when cleaning up stacks that have already been reduced to paste by siege or airstrikes. Otherwise you are almost guaranteed to be injured after the first battle. By making this promotion accessible, you could include some mounted units with your CR stack to help clean up -- their two moves are wasted by tagging along with the cannons, but they redeem themselves in the cleanup phase.

Not sure how much of a difference it would make.

---- March ----
Like Blitz, I'd like to reduce the prerequisite to C2. I really like the idea of having March armies, but it's just not useful when it's only available to elite units. This way, it's actually feasible to get a whole army with March out in the field, or at least give this to your stack defenders. Do you think this would be overpowered?

You can get March as the third promotion already. Medic 1 which is available at D1 or C1 unlocks it.

---- Commando ----
Have you ever actually given a unit this promotion? I haven't, and it seems like such a fun one, too. I would like to change this to be available after C3. That way an Aggressive and/or Charismatic leader would feasibly be able to field pillaging stacks with Commando. Sounds pretty fun, don't you think? It's not available to siege, so it wouldn't allow for ridiculously overpowered conquests, right?

This promo is rare I agree, but whole armies with 10 moves through enemy territory would completely change the industrial and modern eras, the AI couldn't possibly adapt.

---- Mobility ----
I'd probably change this to be available after Flanking 1, like Sentry. Even then, it doesn't seem useful enough to merit taking the promotion very often.

If it only needed Flanking 1 it would drastically reduce the usefulness of Keshiks, as everyones Horse Archers could do similar things.....

---- Morale ----
Seems to be the least useful of the warlord promotions. It's okay if you have some points left over after taking Medic 3, but even then it's just the least useless thing to take, maybe not even as good as Leadership. Would this be wildly overpowered if it didn't require a warlord and was available after C3? Maybe after C4? It'd be cool to actually be able to use 2-move melee/gunpowder units or 3-move mounted units, but a single unit with more movement than the rest of the stack is no more than a novelty. I would probably choose to not allow this on siege units. What do you think, too powerful?

AI couldn't handle it if it was a common promotion, would likely make AGG obscenely powerful if you could have it after C3 (10XP 2 move rifles?)
I use it quite a lot on galleys (5 move galleys by just adding a GG) if there are a lot of islands to shift around making it the only GG promotion I ever use that isn't M3 and therfore vastly more useful than leadership, C6 and tactics.
Don't know what other people use it for, but not many people seem to use GGs for anything but super medics anyway.


---- Guerrilla, Woodsman ----
I've been dissatisfied with these since Vanilla. It doesn't make sense to me why the bonus is only for defense in levels 1 and 2. And then when they made the level 3 promotions, they threw in some gimmicky bonus that has nothing to do with the terrain, just to make it "worth it" to go down these lines at all, and so the free promotions on jaguars and gallics are not worthless. I think I will probably make levels 1 and 2 grant attack bonuses and just remove the level 3 promotions completely. That's just me though, I bet a lot of folks will disagree.

The withdraw bonus does make sense for a Guerilla promotion.... First Strikes aren't a total mismatch for Woodsman 3 either, I don't think the healing fits well mind. Leave em be!

---- Navigation ----
I might make this available for ships from the get-go, instead of requiring transports to take a useless promotion (Flanking) first. Galleys and triremes get so few experience points anyway, I feel like they deserve the extra movement point if they survive the coin-flip combat. Maybe I will reduce the movement points of post-Drydock ships to compensate for the easy Navigation. Also, do you think the AI will know how to use this?

This is more of a problem with the poor naval combat system and the way it collides with the XP system. If you really want nav 1 galleys, attack a barb galley. If you win you will get 4 XP (if neither have promotions), you only need 5XP for nav 1.
Messing with it will drastically alter the balance of many things, from the relative power of naval/land units to the power of AGG to the power of the Viking UB. This is something best left alone.

Makes sense.

For the naval ones, I'd like that. Nav2 still requires flanking 1 (to prevent Ragnar from building Nav2 ships right away), and I'd keep that. So, ships get 1 movement point easily, but to make them faster, you still need to spend effort.

Otherwise, I think it's fair to give Gunpowder units CR. Maybe you could compensate by giving musketmen -10% city attack. But I wouldn't allow it for cavalry, and I'd probably take it away from tanks as well. Tanks already can go the combat line, or go combat/pinch, or go up the drill line, or use flanking. I'd also combine that with allowing cavalry to be upgraded to tanks (and helicopters), and allowing tanks to flank siege units. That turns your tanks into open field attackers and mop up, and lets infantry be the main city raiders.

I'd keep morale as a specific warlord promotion. It's actually very useful on a medic (I love having a M3/Morale chariot, since I can leave it behind to heal my units, and by the time they heal, I can scuttle him to the next city I took without doing the slow trudging through land). If you changed it to require C2/3, then that takes away the medic usefulness (plus having it as C3 or a warlord seems weird). However, I do agree with you it would be kind of neat to have an army of cavalry and morale-riflemen walking around. Plus if you opened it up, it would definitely help for when Shaka's Impis get upgraded, if you promote them combat->morale, they keep the mobility promotion.

Changes to promotions will need to be made very carefully as they can greatly impact the balance of certain traits and UUs and units in general.

Thanks for your feedback. I realize that these changes will greatly alter the balance of the game, which is why I'm asking for feedback. I'd rather some of the promotions be overpowered than how they currently are—completely useless. I guess what I'm trying to get at in this thread are specific examples of how this would make things overpowered to the point of being broken, so I can avoid these. Though really, I have the ability to simply not take advantage of the exploits, as I've always done in Civ games.

Charge is available after C1, its usually a waste of a promo anyway.
The problem with the bold bit being, that if all units could counter these specialist assault units very early then counter units like Spearmen, Pikes, and Anti-tanks would be much less useful.

You're right about Charge, I was getting confused with how it was in Vanilla.

Even if formation were available earlier, I don't think it would make Spearmen less useful. Axes or Swords with +25% vs Mounted will still be less effective than an unpromoted Spear, not even considering that Spears themselves can get the promotion earlier. More importantly, this would give players the flexibility to promote some Axes or Swords to Formation in mid-campaign if, say, you didn't pack enough Spears, or you lost them to some unlucky RNG rolls. Wouldn't you agree?

You can get March as the third promotion already. Medic 1 which is available at D1 or C1 unlocks it.

It would still make March more useful, albeit slightly, to allow that second promotion to be a useful Combat promotion instead of the unnecessary Medic. (Assuming you're trying to make a full March army.) I just finished playing an Industrial-era start with Washington, and I really enjoyed using SEALs. If March was available earlier (to Aggressive leaders at least), you'd have a nontrivial choice between CR promotions for the bulk of your melee units or C1+C2+March for a sustained campaign. As it is now, I wouldn't consider giving Medic 1 to a large number of units just for March. And I definitely don't feel like this would be overpowered, considering the ridiculous power of a Medic3 + Woodsman3 unit...

This promo is rare I agree, but whole armies with 10 moves through enemy territory would completely change the industrial and modern eras, the AI couldn't possibly adapt.

Yeah, this would seem pretty overpowered. In the game I mentioned above, my Ironworks city could churn out 13-exp units, which is just enough to get Combat3 + Commando if that was allowed. I'm searching for some middle ground here, not useless, but not brokenly overpowered. Any suggestions?

If it only needed Flanking 1 it would drastically reduce the usefulness of Keshiks, as everyones Horse Archers could do similar things.....

I feel like Keshiks are pretty low on usefulness anyway. I would probably give them a +10% City Attack bonus to compensate for making Mobility more accessible. Mobility is another one of those promotions that would be useful but not really attainable in the Ancient/Classical eras, and attainable but not useful later.

AI couldn't handle it if it was a common promotion, would likely make AGG obscenely powerful if you could have it after C3 (10XP 2 move rifles?)
I use it quite a lot on galleys (5 move galleys by just adding a GG) if there are a lot of islands to shift around making it the only GG promotion I ever use that isn't M3 and therfore vastly more useful than leadership, C6 and tactics.
Don't know what other people use it for, but not many people seem to use GGs for anything but super medics anyway.

I agree that this does seem like it would be obscenely powerful, but I think I might try it out anyway, as an experiment if nothing else. It has a certain degree of charm and flavor, the idea of a general training his troops to be ruthlessly efficient and mobile, so that he can outmaneuver the enemy in their own lands. And it's not like you could have your CR cake and eat it, too. You'd have to pass on the CR line, plus you'll need either a super-unit-training city set up or a lot of veterans with Combat promotions.

The 5-move Galley -- brilliant! I'd never thought of that, but I can definitely see myself using that in the future.