Healing by Combat Class

Ok, so the Healing Unit Review is complete and filler art has been established for me (THANKS Sparth!) so I'll begin implementation of the units immediately. I'd wait for feedback on the review but I know it's a lot to look over and there's not much activity here as it is so I don't figure many will have much to say there (though if you do pipe up... should be easy enough to make adjustments.)

One note: With base values being well developed, free promos shouldn't be an issue with these units so I've not established any (though when I edit some of the existing special units, some may show one or two that may be necessary to keep.) The next step will be to rework the healing promotions then the buildings. This could come together in full within a week or less here. Navies will suffer in some scant definitions here for a little bit but once the Naval Review is complete (units put in the game etc...), which shouldn't take too much longer either, they should be operating as intended as well.

I only have a minor worry. The Monk is the Western version of the Shaolin Monk sort of. They both represent the direction the idea of "monk" took in the various regions. I am not sure they should be limited to only healers of people since some in the West, at least, developed siege and anti-siege mechanisms. Is it possible for both to be secondary in people, animal and mechanical?

Dancing Hoskuld said:

I only have a minor worry. The Monk is the Western version of the Shaolin Monk sort of. They both represent the direction the idea of "monk" took in the various regions. I am not sure they should be limited to only healers of people since some in the West, at least, developed siege and anti-siege mechanisms. Is it possible for both to be secondary in people, animal and mechanical?

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I'd not have thought monks of either type were used for repairing siege weapons but I can see how that could work out. The main thing for these guys is primarily to be healers but more capable combat units that can actually give an assassin a run for his money when trying to kill off your stack's healers. They're already pretty good at healing (not as good as the specialized healers here) but if they were somewhat capable of Mechanical healing it probably wouldn't throw them into imbalance-land too bad.

Is it possible? Yes. I can go ahead and include some small value there (they already have some animal healing) - and the combat class 'Heals(Mechanical)' which would also come along with the ability to take promos that would enable them to get much better at it... of course that would be at the cost of developing other promos. Sometimes jacks of all trades can really also be masters of none so it should be somewhat in balance still. I just wouldn't want to set up players to only use monks over all other healer types in their stacks is all.

Interesting concept... again, I'd never have guessed they took such a historic role.

Thunderbrd said:

Sometimes jacks of all trades can really also be masters of none so it should be somewhat in balance still. I just wouldn't want to set up players to only use monks over all other healer types in their stacks is all.

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Jack of all trades is actually a very fitting description of the western medieval monks. They had the privilege of education for the sake of enlightenment in and of itself; therefore they dabbled in anything and everything that interested them; concepts and ideas that were too complex for the common peasant, merchant, noble or skilled worker were, if not invented by them, quickly recorded and preserved by them.
An example of this would be the Cistercian order who were considered as excellent metallurgies and hydraulic engineers.

Fun-fact from Wikipedia: Laskill, an outstation of Rievaulx Abbey and the only medieval blast furnace so far identified in Great Britain, was one of the most efficient blast furnaces of its time. Slag from contemporary furnaces contained a substantial concentration of iron, whereas the slag of Laskill was low in iron content, and is believed to have produced cast iron with efficiency similar to a modern blast furnace. The monks may have been on the verge of building dedicated furnaces for the production of cast iron, but the furnace did not survive Henry's Dissolution in the late 1530s, and the type of blast furnace pioneered there did not spread outside Rievaulx. Some historians believe that the suppression of the English monasteries may have stamped out an industrial revolution.

OK, I know I need to do some debugging and some of the building reviews for education bonuses (as well as for healing by unitcombat modifications) but I was also in the middle of getting these units in place so I had to finish that up first (and that demands work on the promotions immediately as well) so I've completed the units in the XML at this point. I won't update the SVN with them until I've got the promotions sorted out as well so maybe by end of day tomorrow that'll be wrapped up. Then I'll jump on the building stuff.

But for now I'm looking on my end at the basic fill-in arts and I had a few comments to help Sparth finalize the designs. These are just to help restructure from the basic fill-ins we have. Some of those fill-ins are completely off the unit design and others I felt I'd just make some more refined artistic style notes. The first really need to be corrected while the second are just my suggestions.

Wise Woman: Looks good but we shouldn't have much in the way of clothing at this tech stage should we?

Shepherd: Needs his crooked staff.

Cartwright: Almost HAS a crooked staff, but does look good and I don't think it's a Shepherd's staff enough to warrant swapping them out.

Veterinarian: I like it for the most part.

Siege Engineer: A good step up from the Cartwright.

Field Vet: He's become a mounted unit at this point in the stat design so we'll have to find another approach here but I like the look of the guy.

Gear Mechanic: Give him a Hammer as opposed to a sword and he should be pretty cool.

Medical Veterinarian: If we can replace the rifle with a medical bag he'll be spot on I think.

Machinist: Looks really on target I think.

Mechanic: A very fitting upgrade. Nice.

Aviation Technician: Love it!

Motor Pool: Right on target.

Flight Technician: Would be a person rather than a vehicle as it is now.

Auto Electrician: We're on track here I think. A little modification to get it not looking quite as military and we're there.

Jet Technician: Would also be a person rather than a vehicle - yes... the air healing line never vehicularizes because it 'makes it easier' to fly them in wherever needed.

Programmer: Yeah... cool!

Replication Mechanic: Looking good!

Astronautic Technician: Yeah, with some recoloring we can work with that I think.

Software Developer: Just about perfect!

Service Droid: I like this but I think Hydro should review that one (once it's on the SVN at least) in particular for he has a number of robotic unit arts up his sleeve here.

Systems Analyst: These are cyborgs - basically half man half machine... I'm not sure this art fits well for them here. (Mind on this and a few others my initial art suggestions may have been restructured once I got deeper into the stat design so don't take it as criticism at all please.)

Repair Clouds: We know what we need to do there I think.


Anyhow... very cool stuff - I just didn't want you to go about refining them without at least a little guiding feedback on them so they could fit their combat classes was all.

TB, add these units with my proposal units and I do the rest. Including buttons

Okie... I do need to get the promos worked out first though to be fair.

I've worked up the proposed new promotions that accompany this modification set Here!

Ok, Promotions are in place. I've reduced the general healing factors from buildings for cities in preparation for doing up the combat class healing tags for them over the week.

Feedback on how it looks in-game so far is welcome.

I am not convinced that "Self Heal" should have more than one level. Perhaps the second level should be more difficult to get.

Self Healing promotions on units that can't get wounded, eg missionaries and corporate execs is a waste. These units are just captured.

Those units that don't have Strength can't get promotions can they? (wait... workers can so maybe that's been more generically opened up. I'll look into it.)

If you look closely, the amount of healing is actually fairly small on self heal and self repair. However, you can actually gain additional base HP from the extended continuation of this promotionline. Furthermore it adds Fortitude to the unit which has no effect now but will once poisons and diseases and elemental damage forms start coming into play as a general resistance to and recovering from those sorts of attacks. It also adds a very small growing chance to gain a round's worth of healing on a combat victory. Besides, I think we need more than Combat as core promotionline options don't you?

Anyhow, play with it for a bit and see if it grows on you please and then we can review. If it's applying to some Unitcombats it shouldn't I can cut them off from access so the ones it shouldn't be working for I need to know. (Actually it would be best to code those self healing tags to make the promo invalid for units with no str as many other tags have been defined in this manner.)

Also... was considering if perhaps there should be more tech prereqs on that line.


A note of nostalgia though... your recent discussion in the ROM sector led me to find what may have been my first ever post on the forums here:http://forums.civfanatics.com/showpost.php?p=8776932&postcount=122

Sure come along way since then eh? lol Go figure I jumped right into discussions with you even back then.

TB, check newest SVN. I uploaded new buttons for all new mechanics / veterinary units. Short description:
- veterinary as normal (human) healing units have cross in left-up corner but cross is greenish
- mechanics, programers etc. has black screw symbol
- normal mechanics are equiped with hammer
- aviation ones got wrench
- programmers got computer keyboard
- non-human units are represented by vehicles/droids/nanite symbols (similar to combat units) with screw symbol in left-up corner

Reskining/remodeling take little more time but I should include all your suggestions in this week.

Sounds great Sparth! I'll take a look soon as I can.

Sparth said:

TB, check newest SVN. I uploaded new buttons for all new mechanics / veterinary units. Short description:
- veterinary as normal (human) healing units have cross in left-up corner but cross is greenish
- mechanics, programers etc. has black screw symbol
- normal mechanics are equiped with hammer
- aviation ones got wrench
- programmers got computer keyboard
- non-human units are represented by vehicles/droids/nanite symbols (similar to combat units) with screw symbol in left-up corner

Reskining/remodeling take little more time but I should include all your suggestions in this week.

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Ok, I've reviewed the new buttons and I like them. A few notes:
1) A green cross on promos has indicated disease control so although I think the green cross looks good for the animal healers, perhaps a red paw print might work better to keep from there being any confusion there?

2) The red cross would probably be more appropriate for the nano (heal all) healers - or a new symbol entirely since it handles all categories.

3) The wise woman was overlooked in this round of buttons.

Otherwise I think we're looking really good. I quite like the Software Developer in particular... he looks quite the part


@DH: On further thought regarding your feedback I was wondering if renaming the self heal promotionline to Stamina and the self repair promotionline to Integrity or something along those lines, so as to enhance the message that there's more than healing intended here. Would this help do you think?

1., 2., 3., done

Thunderbrd said:

@DH: On further thought regarding your feedback I was wondering if renaming the self heal promotionline to Stamina and the self repair promotionline to Integrity or something along those lines, so as to enhance the message that there's more than healing intended here. Would this help do you think?

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I am still playing around feeling my way with this. I do dislike the fact that any unit seems to be able to get heal sea units for example. Why should my Bear Riders units be able to get anything other than the self heal promotions? It detracts from the healer line.

Ok... There's no people style naval healers so I could certainly turn that off for non-sea domain units. I was wondering about that.

I can also up the level requirement on the other ones that give any unit some healer access. This would make it more of an exclusive and less common concept to take a non-healer and turn them into a lesser version. (At the moment it's only 3rd level prereq so perhaps 5th or 6th would be more appropriate?)

It is more than just that. The self heal promotions are probably OK for all units but the specialist healing ones should be more restricted to the specialist healer units. Otherwise I could make a healer out of anything and thus counter any future and existing anti-healer tactics eg snipers that target healers wont target a bear rider I have only given healing promotions to as it is not a healer combat class.

Dancing Hoskuld said:

It is more than just that. The self heal promotions are probably OK for all units but the specialist healing ones should be more restricted to the specialist healer units. Otherwise I could make a healer out of anything and thus counter any future and existing anti-healer tactics eg snipers that target healers wont target a bear rider I have only given healing promotions to as it is not a healer combat class.

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And that's the strategic enablement intended. That and being able to get faster healers by making a normally non-healing unit able to gain healing - (albeit not nearly as effective healing.) However, again, if it's held to a much higher level prerequisite it makes it more earned to be able to achieve this. 3rd may be way too low... I was thinking early prehistoric at first - later game it's far too easy.

It makes it harder for the AI to keep up. It may be OK in games where all players are human but otherwise it just makes the game easier for humans since they can "game it". Why have specialists when they are not special?