Vokarya's Workshop: Units

I'm going to move on to units now that I've made some building proposals. Mostly, I'm fine with the unit roster as it currently stands. I have found some places where a new unit could be worked into the existing units without much disruption. I'm also really looking to expand certain units into full upgrade lines.

My rule for finding spots for new units is the "rule of thirds". A unit should not be replaced by its upgrade within the same third of an era. I came up with this when I looked at the first chain of Gunpowder units.

• Arquebusier is early Renaissance.
• Musketman is middle Renaissance.
• Rifleman is late Renaissance.

This gives you a chance to build at least some of a new unit before it gets replaced.

The biggest problem with adding new units is artwork. A building can get by without artwork (all that's really needed is a button) but a unit has to have models. I've found what I could in the downloads and I've looked at a bunch of mods, so I've tried to do the best I can.

The Steamer is the first unit that I want to add. This bridges the gap between the Galleon (mid-Renaissance) and the Transport (mid-Industrial). The Steamer is available at Steam Power, so it comes right at the beginning of the Industrial Era. I really prefer the short name Steamer over something clunky like Paddlesteamer.

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It's been statted to fit neatly between the Galleon and the Transport, and it also gives an actual transport ship in the Steam Ship category (Galleon is Sailing Ship, Transport is Diesel Ship) and lets you build a semi-modern ship without Oil Products.

Looks good to me and a very nice idea. But are you aware that Arquebusiers, Musketmen and Riflemen are being discovered mostly at the end of the renaissance era? It looks like AI is researching every other conceivable tech before looking for techs granting those units. So AI moves very quickly from one to the other. At least, that's what I've seen during my testing.

45°38'N-13°47'E;12859537 said:

Looks good to me and a very nice idea. But are you aware that Arquebusiers, Musketmen and Riflemen are being discovered mostly at the end of the renaissance era? It looks like AI is researching every other conceivable tech before looking for techs granting those units. So AI moves very quickly from one to the other. At least, that's what I've seen during my testing.

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I'm working with the techs as they are laid out on the tech tree (left-to-right). AI research preferences are a totally separate issue. I just want to make sure that I'm not creating units too close together.

The Slinger is another Ancient Era unit I want to add. The Slinger is a proto-Archer. When I added Woodworking to the prerequisites for Archery, it pushed Archery out of the early Ancient era and into the middle Ancient, giving enough room for a pre-Archer unit to exist. I chose to assign the Slinger purely to Weaving just to give Weaving a little something extra. I felt like Weaving was a pretty bland tech to start with and wanted to give it something unique.

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Here's a comparison between the Slinger and the Archer.

I looked very hard to find as many ethnic artworks for the Slinger as I could. I was not able to find any East Asian or Indian slingers. If anyone can point me to a specific mod with an Asian slinger, I'll be happy to incorporate it.

The Mediterrranean Slinger gets used for most civilizations both around the Mediterranean and into Asia.
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The Balearic Slinger is used for most of Europe.
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I found an African Slinger to use for the African civilizations.
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There is also a Mesoamerican Slinger that gets used for all of the indigenous American civilizations.
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I found specific slingers for England, Denmark (used for Vikings) and Russia.
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Finally, Greece, Rome, and Byzantium use the Peltast artwork that is already in the game. The name Peltast and the Peltast artwork were being used as a Greece flavor rename of the Archer. I moved this over to the Slinger and found some new artwork for a Greek Archer.
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Sounds good. Ancient units did need some work, ur early catapult has helped for sure and now this guy.

The Ram is a unit that I never intended to stand alone. I wanted to keep my first round of changes to the revised tech tree and the new content needed to keep the new techs from being content-free filler techs.

The Ram is supposed to upgrade to the Battering Ram. This comes available at Warfare. This uses a more primitive artwork than the current Battering Ram uses. (I know I'm stealing Assyria's UU. I have a new one coming as well.)

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The Battering Ram upgrades to the Siege Ram at Siege Warfare. This uses the artwork that is currently used for the Unique Battering Ram.

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Comparison of strengths:

The Siege Ram has to be very good at reducing city defenses because it coexists with the Trebuchet throughout the Medieval Era. The Siege Ram cannot attack at all, so it needs to be better at bombarding to be worth building in the first place. One of the key rules of the Ram class of units is that all they do is destroy city defenses.

Finally, since I appropriated the name Battering Ram for a generic unit, Assyria needs a new UU. The Redu is the best unit I found for this. The Redu is a Spearman replacement that gets +15% Hills Attack (which is not kept when it upgrades to Pikeman or beyond) and free Formation I promotions (which are kept). I actually like promotions for UU's as it encourages building the units (and doesn't feel like getting short-changed when the UU upgrades) and keeping the UU's around to upgrade them.

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Vokarya said:

I actually like promotions for UU's as it encourages building the units (and doesn't feel like getting short-changed when the UU upgrades) and keeping the UU's around to upgrade them.

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Looks great to me!

+1

JosEPh

Ps, @45*,
How long before Baby? Weeks?, Days?

JosEPh_II said:

Ps, @45*,
How long before Baby? Weeks?, Days?

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If he's on time, 27 days

45°38'N-13°47'E;12871398 said:

If he's on time, 27 days

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You do realize that after he arrives your modding time will diminish greatly for the next 3 months or more.

JosEPh

JosEPh_II said:

You do realize that after he arrives your modding time will diminish greatly for the next 3 months or more.

JosEPh

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I do, but for the moment my job allows me enough free time. I'm more worried if/when my job will change Anyway I'm testing some more code from C2C but I guess I'll wait for Vokarya to release his next pack before making any real change. I could do a small update in the meatime but most of the dll work can be delayed. Nothing critical besides Koshling's memory saving code. I feel the game is playable enough as it is now, althoug it's far from being complete; what I'd really like to fix is OOS issues on MP games.

So the almost-last unit I want to include are a pair of advanced gunpowder elephant units (there's one more coming, but it's a bit special). I didn't really like War Elephant upgrading to Mailed Knight and there are two artworks existing of elephants with guns that I decided to make into units. I'm also a big fan of extending unit lines and I thought it would be good to have the elephant line extend as far as the horse cavalry line, although there aren't quite so many elephant units.

These two units are both supposed to be slow pure-attack units. I think a proper elephant unit involves it being Mounted class and speed 1. Horse units should be speed 2.

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Elephant Bombardier becomes available at Gunpowder. It also requires Elephant Riding because it is just possible to get to Gunpowder without ER.

One thing I deliberately did not do is give Elephant Bombardier any kind of city defense bombard ability. I couldn't justify it on the last Elephant and didn't want to take any abilities away from the Bombardier when it upgrades.

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Elephant Cavalry has the same tech prerequisites (Rifling and Military Tradition) as regular Cavalry. It's a really strong attacker and then upgrades to the Early Tank.

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45°38'N-13°47'E;12871438 said:

I do, but for the moment my job allows me enough free time. I'm more worried if/when my job will change Anyway I'm testing some more code from C2C but I guess I'll wait for Vokarya to release his next pack before making any real change. I could do a small update in the meatime but most of the dll work can be delayed. Nothing critical besides Koshling's memory saving code. I feel the game is playable enough as it is now, althoug it's far from being complete; what I'd really like to fix is OOS issues on MP games.

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AIAndy is a bit of gun in regards to OOS mp stuff, he'd be the person to get advice from I think. Not sure how often he's online, you'd probably need to pm him.

Sgtslick said:

AIAndy is a bit of gun in regards to OOS mp stuff, he'd be the person to get advice from I think. Not sure how often he's online, you'd probably need to pm him.

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I know and I will It's just that I'm working on other issues now; when I will try and fix OOS issues, I'll have some MP test games to collect some OOS reports and logs, then I'll see if I can discuss these problems with AIAndy. I don't think there are many changes necessary to the dll to solve these OOS bugs; some revisions ago, there were almost no OOS; I just need to find which revision is causing troubles. Technically speaking it shouldn't be really hard. Just a long and boring process.

Python can also cause oos.
Colonists is an example

In normal A New Dawn there was a unit that came so soon that their predessors were obsolete way to quickly i think. That unit was the "Chivalry". Just thought Id point that out.

Sword_Of_Geddon said:

In normal A New Dawn there was a unit that came so soon that their predessors were obsolete way to quickly i think. That unit was the "Chivalry". Just thought Id point that out.

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Medieval Era mounted units need some work. The Heavy Cavalry is an elephant unit (heavy attack and speed 1) in horse's clothing and the Knight seems out of place with the Mailed Knight so shortly thereafter. I'd like to differentiate mounted/armored/helicopter units into Light and Heavy lines throughout all the eras, but the vanilla Knight and Tank units wind up in a grey "medium" area.

I believe there's a problem with Ram: I don't think it's meant to have the "Can only defend" tag. I can't do anything with it: I can't bombard and I can't attack. Can you check your version Vokarya?

Edit: I'm talking about the first Ram; I know it's not in this thread but it looked like the right thread.