Deliverator
Graphical Hackificator
Edit: Redirected to offworld goods thread
Civilizations, Leaders and Traits
- Thread starter Deliverator
- Start date
davidlallen
Deity
Thanks for the feedback. Without sdk changes, we cannot have a trait grant a beaker rate to a building. A trait can reduce the hammer cost of a building, or increase the happiness of a building. So I will not add scientific.
To make sure I understand, you are saying that the player can easily trade with other AI's who have offworld resources, and collect a large number of them. If the AI only had 2 resources, and/or if the AI placed a much higher value on trading them, then the player could not collect so many. Is that right?
We adjusted the iAITradeModifier flag for the resources concluding in this post. Perhaps those values are wrong, and we should make all the offworld resources much higher. What do you think?
Ahriman
Tyrant
Then maybe also increase the Quizarate missionary cost slightly?
I meant as a benefit to Spritual trait; Spritual leaders woudl spread missionaries faster, because they had higher movement rate. Its not a huge issue, it was just a minor idea ot give a mild benefit.
25% is too strong. 15% might be more reasonable, and that could be very powerful too.
libraries and research centers were the double speed buildings. (University was with Philosophical).
This would require sdk changes.
Deliverator
Graphical Hackificator
I made a new Ecaz leaderhead. I suggest we use this new one for Archduke Armand and the existing one for Duke Prad.
davidlallen
Deity
Great. Now we need a second, photographic, Ixian leader.
Ahriman
Tyrant
I would go ahead and use the non-photographic cyborg for now. Its more important to have something cybernetic than something photographic. Probably not too many photo-quality pics of cyborgs that aren't highly recognizable as other fictional characters.
Ahriman
Tyrant
I thought I should centralize and clean up my proposal for Ix and Technocracy.
Technocracy religion:
Founded by Industrialism. Cannot be founded by Fremen, Tleilaxu or Bene Gesserit.
Allows:
Automated Factory. Requires Technocracy religion. Requires Industrialism Tech.
+35% hammers, +2 unhappy.
+15% hammers with Ixian Technologies resource.
Computerized Research Lab. Requires Technocracy Religion. Requires Thinking Machines tech.
+35% beakers, +2 unhappy.
+15% beakers with Ixian Technologies resource.
NO unique Ixian versions of these.
Create some Butlerian Jihad events, mostly for flavor, that trigger only in cities with these buildings.
Potential issues:
i) Require Technocracy state religion, rather than just presence of religion?
ii) What techs should things go at? Cybernetics left too empty with the buildings only at 2 techs? Create an Ixian Cyborg UU (with no national limit) at Cybernetics tech as well as a Walker URU there?
iii) Happiness penalty just in local city (+2 or even +3), or in all cities in continent, or all cities in your empire (only +1)?
* * *
Ix faction:
Has unique access Ixian Technologies (like Corrino have access to Sardaukar Cooperation), 2 copies.
URUs: 4 Ixian Walker units, national limit 10 each, require Ixian Technologies resource. (these stats and tech requirements may need some tweaking.)
UB: Ixian Skunkworks. +10% hammers, +10% beakers, units in this city have a -50% upgrade cost. Costs 200 hammers (more?). Requires Desert Industry tech.
Issue:
-50% upgrade cost too large a bonus? Drop to -40%?
* * *
This is cleaner, and avoids many of the objects to the previous design.
Technocracy religion:
Founded by Industrialism. Cannot be founded by Fremen, Tleilaxu or Bene Gesserit.
Allows:
Automated Factory. Requires Technocracy religion. Requires Industrialism Tech.
+35% hammers, +2 unhappy.
+15% hammers with Ixian Technologies resource.
Computerized Research Lab. Requires Technocracy Religion. Requires Thinking Machines tech.
+35% beakers, +2 unhappy.
+15% beakers with Ixian Technologies resource.
NO unique Ixian versions of these.
Create some Butlerian Jihad events, mostly for flavor, that trigger only in cities with these buildings.
Potential issues:
i) Require Technocracy state religion, rather than just presence of religion?
ii) What techs should things go at? Cybernetics left too empty with the buildings only at 2 techs? Create an Ixian Cyborg UU (with no national limit) at Cybernetics tech as well as a Walker URU there?
iii) Happiness penalty just in local city (+2 or even +3), or in all cities in continent, or all cities in your empire (only +1)?
* * *
Ix faction:
Has unique access Ixian Technologies (like Corrino have access to Sardaukar Cooperation), 2 copies.
URUs: 4 Ixian Walker units, national limit 10 each, require Ixian Technologies resource. (these stats and tech requirements may need some tweaking.)
UB: Ixian Skunkworks. +10% hammers, +10% beakers, units in this city have a -50% upgrade cost. Costs 200 hammers (more?). Requires Desert Industry tech.
Issue:
-50% upgrade cost too large a bonus? Drop to -40%?
* * *
This is cleaner, and avoids many of the objects to the previous design.
Ahriman
Tyrant
The Harkonnen Inkvine trooper seems very strange to me.
1) Inkvine is literally just a plant, that can be made into whips to control unarmed slaves. Its not a combat weapon, and its not somethnig a soldier would use. It feels bizarre for this to be a combat weapon, and it feels very strange for it to be giving a combat bonus against units with swords!
http://dune.wikia.com/wiki/Inkvine
2) A weaker city defender with a bonus vs melee feels strange to me. How is this related to the Harkonnen themes? Harkonnen should have a high-mass quantity army of weak soldiers and conscripts, and should focus more on heavy tanks and artillery.
* * *
Also, the Harkonnen Devastator was intended to be super-high strength, but only have 1 movement point. That thing is sloooow.
Another idea: is it possible to reduce xp given to newly created units?
So you could have a "conscription center" that gave -1 xp to newly created units, but +20% military production rate.
It wouldnt' take units below 0 xp, but would reduce the bonuses given by other buildings.
Or: Harkonnen could have a barracks replacement, that gave a +20% military production rate rather than the +3 xp. Or tweak the numbers slightly for balance.
* * *
Ordos trike might need an extra city attack penalty, to ovoid OPness and to emphasize its function as a raider.
1) Inkvine is literally just a plant, that can be made into whips to control unarmed slaves. Its not a combat weapon, and its not somethnig a soldier would use. It feels bizarre for this to be a combat weapon, and it feels very strange for it to be giving a combat bonus against units with swords!
http://dune.wikia.com/wiki/Inkvine
2) A weaker city defender with a bonus vs melee feels strange to me. How is this related to the Harkonnen themes? Harkonnen should have a high-mass quantity army of weak soldiers and conscripts, and should focus more on heavy tanks and artillery.
* * *
Also, the Harkonnen Devastator was intended to be super-high strength, but only have 1 movement point. That thing is sloooow.
Another idea: is it possible to reduce xp given to newly created units?
So you could have a "conscription center" that gave -1 xp to newly created units, but +20% military production rate.
It wouldnt' take units below 0 xp, but would reduce the bonuses given by other buildings.
Or: Harkonnen could have a barracks replacement, that gave a +20% military production rate rather than the +3 xp. Or tweak the numbers slightly for balance.
* * *
Ordos trike might need an extra city attack penalty, to ovoid OPness and to emphasize its function as a raider.
davidlallen
Deity
(redirected comments on units to the 1.6 feedback thread.)
Deliverator
Graphical Hackificator
I am in favour of all this including the vehicle capture for the Fremen, but you have made a good point in the past that there will need a great range of UUs if we remove suspensor/thopter/vehicle access for them.
I have suggested the ability to provoke wars as being something that could be Corrinos unique ability. I know this was recently discussed for the Reverend Mothers, but maybe we should give this to Corrino since RMs already have an ability to adjust diplomacy.
I think we should think of a unique ability for every civ. Just adding UUs and UBs is not going to achieve much more faction differentiation than vanilla has.
Slvynn
Duke Vector fon Pixel
- Joined
- Apr 3, 2005
- Messages
- 2,073
I tend to disagree that adding UB and UU and some URU mechanics will not make civs distinct enough, but thats old talk , wont come back to it.
UB and UU already dictate to play differently, focus different techs, use different units. With espionage features, and intresting unit mechanics like traitor or KH that would be enough - simply there need to be more of them.
Simply some "special" mechanics might be abused by Player and misused by AI, and some will make some civs incredibly strong against other civs (Fremen capturing vehicles against Ix), so with them we need to care, balancing them with other civs as well upon addition.
UB and UU already dictate to play differently, focus different techs, use different units. With espionage features, and intresting unit mechanics like traitor or KH that would be enough - simply there need to be more of them.
Simply some "special" mechanics might be abused by Player and misused by AI, and some will make some civs incredibly strong against other civs (Fremen capturing vehicles against Ix), so with them we need to care, balancing them with other civs as well upon addition.
Ahriman
Tyrant
We wouldn't have to replace every lost vehicle. Really, we would only have to add something at the techs that would otherwise be useless. At the techs that still provide other valuable benefits (eg some of the industrial techs that provide buildings) then we'd be fine just dropping things.
I'm not sure I understand this one, thematically. What is the idea behind this one?
The Corrinos here aren't particularly skilled diplomatically - at least by the time of Shaddam.
One other suggestion on this sort of thing from a while ago was to give Corrino an extra vote in the Landsraad (like how Malakim can get an extra Overcouncil vote in FFH?).
That's not what I said. What I said was that *just* adding 3x UU and 1x UB will not make the civs distinct enough.
Its not what Deliverator said either.
I agree that we need to be careful.
The specific Ixian/Fremen thing is a good point; maybe we would have some way of making the Ixian walker vehicles immune to capture. Capturing some suspensors, thopters and scorpions is more what we have in mind here.
Deliverator
Graphical Hackificator
It may be possible to get civs playing differently with only UBs, UUs and URUs, but I think at least one of those items per civ should have an ability that cannot be found in vanilla. That might be a promotion (like Sandrider) or it might be a special ability for one of the UUs (such as the Reverend Mother). I appreciate that "special" mechanics might be harder to balance and lead to AI issues, but they are also more interesting from both theme and gameplay perspectives.
You're right, I actually meant to say "the Fremen will need a greater range of UUs if we remove suspensor/thopter/vehicle access for them".
I suppose conceptually it might not make sense since we have the Imperialism religion so Corrino might not have the Imperial influence they possess as the beginning of Dune. It is actually a bit difficult to flesh out the theme of Corrino, separate from the Imperial throne. Perhaps we should add some special abilities to the Sardaukar to make them more fearsome.
davidlallen
Deity
I agree. (It is the holiday season.)
The key point here is renaming the Ixian UR from Thinking Machines to Ixian Technologies, along with the Mechanized trait for the Ixian leaders. This way, technocracy buildings can be about thinking machines, and Ix can be about upgraded combat vehicles.
So, let us have these three buildings exactly as you described. For the Ixian UB, we need a promotion, "Adaptable", which is granted by the Skunkworks building. The promotion grants a 50% upgrade discount. In addition, we can add some promotions for vehicles and walkers which are unique to Ix.
One problem is that the walkers are URU, not UU. Perhaps two of the walkers can be UU and the other two can stay URU. This lets the other players have a taste, without getting the whole thing.
For promotions, I am thinking of things like "Self-Repair" which allows March plus a self heal rate; "Radar" which reduces collateral damage ("incoming!"), and perhaps others. If these are limited to Ix, then their vehicle army would lead to a different play style.
Ahriman
Tyrant
Wahey! I know what I'm thankful for this year
Precisely, and Ix's flavor is innovative mechanized, and both Ix and Ordos have a preference for Technocracy religion.
This way, technocracy buildings can be about thinking machines, and Ix can be about upgraded combat vehicles.
Are you sure? There are wonders in many mods (and I thought in vanilla) which just reduced the upgrade cost of units in that city.
There is an important functional difference between the two proposals. The building-reduces-upgrade cost means that even units built in the early game can be cheaply upgraded, whereas the building-grants-promotion means that only units produced in the midgame onwards will have the reduced cost.
I'm not deadset against doing it the promotion way - it could be that being able to cheaply upgrade your quads to rollers might be too strong - but we should consider the functional difference.
Sounds fine. We might need to move them around and change their stats too. I worry that they aren't really powerful enough.
We should also decide; are these going to be national-limited super-elites, or unlimited regulars, or a mix? This has implications for their stats/tech location design.
I like these, though radar might need to do somethnig else too (first strike chance?).
Another way of course to effectively reduce the promotions to Ix would be to make them require the combat 1 AND Flanking 1 promotions. That way, they aren't absolutely limited, but they are far more accessible, since all Ixian vehicles will have these to start.
davidlallen
Deity
I guess I misread your original post, I thought you proposed cheap upgrades for units *built* in that city. In this case granting a promotion has exactly the effect.
I did not search exhaustively in the forums or other mods. But, there is no xml flag in vanilla (and therefore no wonder in vanilla) which grants cheap upgrades. I found one of tsentom's mods "Leonardo's Workshop" which grants cheap upgrades to *all* units regardless of location. This is a pure python mod; I read the code, and the idea is pretty easy. I could modify that to only operate in a particular city.
The problem I see with a building for cheap upgrades in a city is, as usual, getting the AI to use it. If you have units in some other city which are basically idle and could be upgraded, it is a good idea to move the units to the city with the building, and then upgrade. The AI wouldn't know this.
The current stats are:
Walker: str 8 cost 75; requires Liquid Fuel; upgrades to cymek; first strike +10% city +50% melee
Avatar: str 11 cost 110; requires Cybernetics; upgrades to cymek; 10% intercept +25% thopter, hornet, vehicles
Cymek: str 14 cost 125; requires Heat Shields; upgrades to spider; 30% intercept +25% thopter, hornet, vehicles
Spider: str 20 cost 170; requires Thinking Machines; +25% melee
A while ago, you wrote:
ahriman said:
Since we are making these human controlled like tanks, we should not use cybernetics or thinking machines as the techs. To take advantage of cheap upgrades, I suggest an upgrade path of all four. Maybe the first and third ones could be URU, and the second and fourth ones limited to Ix civilization. That way the other players can get a taste, but they can't upgrade them.
Would you like to propose a new design for these four?
The easiest way I can find to make these promotions Ix-specific is to create one new promotion, Mechanized, which is +10% combat and +10% withdrawral. This is equivalent to your proposal (which is in 1.6.5) to give units Combat I and Flanking I. But, now the Ix-limited promotions can require Mechanized.
If I add the capability to make a promotion require a resource, then some of the promotions could require Ixian Technologies and some could require Mechanized; this way other players can get a taste.
Ahriman
Tyrant
Ah, I must have been unclear. But the promotion method is certainly a potentially viable alternative.
Mimicing the Civ3 wonder. Interesting. This is possible, but I'd prefer for Ix to have a building that had to be built in multiple places.
If this were a National Wonder, where the AI had to move all its stuff to a single city to get the cheap upgrade, then I'd agree.
But by design, the Skunkworks is a building that you can build all over the place - and its small beaker and hammer bonuses make it worth doing that.
Therefore, the AI doesn't need to know to move units to particular cities, all it needs to do is to build the Skunkworks, and then it will automatically get the benefits.
The only potential issue is: technically units can be uprgaded anywhere in cultural borders, not just in cities. Does the AI upgrade its units outside cities, ever? Does it do so often enough that it would perform significantly worse with this uprgade?
I can't help but think that the AI's units are nearly always either in its cities, or outside culture en-route to an enemy city invasion, and so in practice the AI would get 95%+ of the benefits of this that human players would, which I think is an acceptable AI degradation.
Can we think of any way of testing this?
Agreed for thinking machines, but I could still see somethnig at cybernetics. Cybernetics can mean various things that don't require any degree of artifical intelligence; a human with technologically enhanced reflexes, or strength, or endurance, or aiming.
We could also have a separate Ixian UU Cyborg here I guess, instead of a walker, but I could also imagine a walker cyborg that was basically directly linked into its human pilot's nervous system, rather than something that was piloted using buttons and switches and steering wheel type things. This could be the Cymek.
Agreed.
This sounds quite interesting. Would it still be worth trading for? Should we do something like this with Sardaukar too, so that Corrino get full flavor, while others who trade for cooperation only get a taste?
Sure, go ahead. We're generally thinking along the same lines here.
These are not quite equivalent; with combat 1, you can instantly get the specialization promotions (eg improved shields) that require combat 1. If that is not a desirable design function, we could drop it, if it is, we could just make them require combat 1 OR mechanized.
Interesting.
Another alternative; maybe all the walker units should start with Mechanized, even if built by someone else? That might help if the trade good were otherwise too weak, and would let the walker units get the radar etc promotions, even if their normal vehicles could not.
Deliverator
Graphical Hackificator
The term Cymek refers to a human-machine hybrid rather than a walker type vehicle. It doesn't really fit with the other names. Perhaps we should shuffle the names around so that Cymek and Avatar belong to Technocracy, Walker and Spider to Ix.
I've suggested before that we could have a mechanic for Cymeks where if they defeat a Melee or Guardsman unit then they have a percentage chance of creating another Cymek unit - representing the conversion of the defeated unit into a cyborg. This unit could belong to the Technocracy religion. If Technocracy is about thinking machines then it would make sense for it to allow units that are cybernetic not just vehicles that happen to have two legs.
We could also bring back the Ixian Hover Tank using Lord Tirian's graphic if we want another vehicle for Ix.
I've suggested before that we could have a mechanic for Cymeks where if they defeat a Melee or Guardsman unit then they have a percentage chance of creating another Cymek unit - representing the conversion of the defeated unit into a cyborg. This unit could belong to the Technocracy religion. If Technocracy is about thinking machines then it would make sense for it to allow units that are cybernetic not just vehicles that happen to have two legs.
We could also bring back the Ixian Hover Tank using Lord Tirian's graphic if we want another vehicle for Ix.
Ahriman
Tyrant
Yes, but these are still human brains augmented by machinery. This feels possible for a high-end Ixian unit even without going Technocracy and introducing artificial intelligences.
From the Butlerian jihad prequel books, the cymeks were basically human brains in advanced combat walkers.
I'd rather we keep Tehnocracy and Ix generally separate, lest we fall back into the debates we've had before. I'm happy to change unit names, but 4 Ixian UU vehicle units feels appropriate, and it feels appropriate that one of them might be enabled by cybernetics tech.
If we wanted to move the Cymek name to a Technocracy religion UU at Cybernetics tech, fine, but lets keep that separate from designing Ix.
This feels out of flavor.
These aren't the Borg; also, they're not short on human inputs; they would give advanced cybernetic wargear to their own most loyal fighters, not captured enemies.
Also, the limits on producing cymeks woudl be on manufacturing all the equipment, not on the availability of human subjects; you wouldn't suddenly get more mechanical equipment just from defeating an enemy unit.
davidlallen
Deity
ahriman said:
Seems reasonable, we can try it.
deliverator said:
I think the direction we are going now is that Ixians don't specialize in thinking machines or AI, but they have much better machinery than the other guys. Cyborg mechanics seem to blur the line, so to make the thematic difference more obvious, maybe we should stay away from that for now.
deliverator said:
I agree we should stay away from cymek and avatar as names if we are aiming at walking tanks. How about:
Crawler: str 6 cost 80; requires Desert Rovers
Walker: str 10 cost 110; requires Maula Pistols (Suspensor Devices?)
Spider: str 15 cost 125; requires Desert Industry
Black Widow: str 20 cost 170; requires Industrialism
The Crawler and spider are URU available with Ixian Weaponry resource, walker and Black Widow are only available to Ix. We need a different name for the base promotion of units built by Mechanized trait leaders. I don't like "Ixian Tech", it is not different enough from Ixian Weaponry, but I can't think of anything better. The effect is +10% combat, +10% withdrawal. Existing promotions available with Ixian Tech:
Interception, Suspensor Disruption, AP Rounds, Improved Shields, AA Rockets, March.
(Interception may seem like an odd choice, think of it as a mech combat game where you mount a pod of AA rockets)
New promotions available with Ixian Tech:
Self Repair: +10% heal rate in every territory
Close Defense: -50% collateral damage
Adaptive: +50% to all experience
Also, how about moving Technocracy one level later in the tech tree so it is founded on cybernetics? This also makes the difference between techno and ix more clear.
