Unit Design

It occurs to me that we never really got a very clear High Elf/Dark elf design.

This post is designed to update the bits and pieces we had into the current design structure.

High Elves


Dark Elves.


Note that while many infantry units are "vanilla", these units are significantly superior to basic core units because of the extra movement from the racial trait.

Mage units as in the old version.
Suggestions, comments, alternatives welcome.

Capturing Slaves for Druchii:

FF promotions xml allows for easy implementation through <iSlaveGenerationChance>. Rather than creating an additional unit of Slavers, could make a Hero promotion like:

Slavedriver (requires Venom Champion and Dark Magic)
+40% to take slaves on combat
aura of +5 production, -1 in nearby city

Could also consider a small chance for slave capture to the Druchii racial promotion so there would always be a reasonable flow of slaves from warfare. In addition to acting as Workers with a somewhat slower build rate, Slaves can be made sacrificable in cities with a Dungeon for a lump sum of hammers, or auctioned in cities with Market for a lump sum of gold.

Forge of ???

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Can't think of a real flavor name, maybe Blast Furnace and mention in pedia that it's a brutal smelting operation crewed by slaves being worked to the death.

I think WH fans will expect us to have Cauldron of Blood as a large battlefield unit with support effects; though I know the Druchii do already have a long armylist. Maybe a cap 1 national unit replacing Cannon (reqs Metal Casting?) with a chance to add Frenzy promo to nearby units - any other suggestions?

I'm a little skeptical of making the vast +5 health bonus for Asur because it wouldn't help them out at all in the early game, and the main effect is just that they'd eventually reach exceptionally large/dense max citysizes in the late game, not something they're known for. They do need some boosts to offset slower growth; the powerful magic is a start but how about keeping some bonus health at +2 or +3 and adding on a +20% to Great People to their Asur Citizens building - this would be quite cool and powerful in combination with having Minor Heroes as GP through the Adventurer mechanic. Temple of Elven Gods already gives a small bump for all Elves, but with their long years of focused training the Asur should have more highly adept Minor Heroes than any faction in the game.

Slavedriver for hero sounds good.

A passive 5% slave chance from the druichii promotion also sounds like a good idea.

We need to rework slaves though; the slaves-as-slow-worker really doesn't work well.
The AI tends to see them as workers which means that it doesn't build enough real workers, and so it doesn't improve its territory enough (though this may also be due to the higher-than-vanilla improvement construction time).
I suggest we either:
a) make slaves as workers with a +300% build rate that die when they finish building an improvement (this exists in some other mods, including the Dunewars mod) or
b) Make slaves into some kind of great engineers, rather than workers, and change their unit AI. So that they can either be added to a city like settling a great engineer or sacrificed for building construction.
The problem is that even +1 hammer from a settled slave could be too much. Maybe if we reduced the slave yield chances then a +1 hammer slave citizen could be ok? 15% with slavery civic, 3% from druichii, +15% from slavedriver promotion on heroes?
Also problematic though with civics that give +bonuses to all specialists.

Or have the base settled slave do nothing, but get +1 hammer from the slavery civic (does FF have expanded options for what civics can do? I know that we didn't have the hooks before to change specific specialist output from civics).

We also discussed some methods before for sacrificing slaves to build slavery buildings in the city.

Blast furnace seems ok.

We never really got decent ideas for a frenzy promotion, or for implementing the cauldron of blood. I think a building though might make more sense for the cauldron than a combat unit.

The Asur health bonus is what high elves have had in previous patches.
It worked quite well; the food penalty is a HUGE penalty that majorly stunts early game growth (because of rounding; any food yields 1-10 get -1, any food yields 11-20 get -2, etc), so Asur are pretty weak in the early game, but allows them steady growth so that they can still get a decent economy in the midgame, while representing their immunity to disease and general clean living.
They really aren't able to build super-cities, because the food penalty is still large; a size 15 city requires 30 food to support for normal civs, but will require 34 food for high elves. +5 health barely covers that, and it takes them longer to get there.

We could tweak it to be +3 health and +20% GPs, I'd be ok with that.

I'd agree making a building or new permanent specialist sounds hard to keep balanced correctly; besides slaves get worked to death harshly and don't move into a city & live happily ever after.

a) make slaves as workers with a +300% build rate that die when they finish building an improvement (this exists in some other mods, including the Dunewars mod)

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That sounds good.

They could also be able to use 1-time hammer or gold sacrifice as well, as plenty of units have access to more than one possible AItype script. if you give them a 1-time sacrifice ability & no other GP powers, with a conventional GP AItype they should be able to move to a city and sacrifice themselves when needed.

We could tweak it to be +3 health and +20% GPs, I'd be ok with that.

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Yeah good points, that sounds like it should be fine. BTW any flavorful resistances for racial promos now that the elemental damage types should actually be working? Maybe Asur could have 20% to resist poison and Druchii 20% to resist unholy?

So, the 300% build rate with worker death, and sacrificing for building construction for say 30 hammers.
25% chance of slave capture from combat from slavery, 5% chance from Dark elf promotion, and +30% chance from slavemaster promotion?

Can we make slaves upkeep-free as well?

On resistances, does "magic resistance" include all elemental damage type resistance? so 20% magic resistance = 20% resistance to fire, holy, unholy, death, etc.
This is what dwarves should have.

Do spell types all also deal magic of some appropriate type?

High elves and dark elves could resist holy and unholy, respectively.
I could see skaven resist poison, chaos dwarves could resist fire, undead already has death immunity/ holy vulnerability/unhoyl resistance, demon should have death resistance/holy vulnerability/unholy immunity, forest spirit has fire vulnerability, elemental and golem have death immunity, dragon should give magic resistance or immunity.

I like the 300% work-to-death-rate for slaves and making them maintenance free. The more I read about the fighter setup the more I like it though I think harpies should really be suicide units, give them a high unit damage cap (like 90%) and a terrible withdrawal rate if that is possible to do for these guys. I don't think Harpies should be fighter units either.

I can't see harpies acting as a finely tuned military unit, more like a mob of flying beastmen who end up dispering (carrying away people to eat, getting speared when running around on the back, running away never to be seen again etc).

If harpies aren't aircraft, then they're too similar to manticores, which share the same unit slot.

Why does having an aerial bombardment ability imply anything about unit discipline or training or cohesion?

How about +5% from Druchii or Dawi Zharr, +30% from Slavedriver (which Chaos Dwarves can also earn), and +10% from Slavery civic (otherwise slaves would add up too fast & Druchii/Chaos Dwarves will likely run Slavery constantly anyway)

I'm not sure but I think Magic Resistance covers resistance to spell effects (Charm etc etc) & isn't a separate damage type. Actually Dwarves wouldn't be resistant at all if you cast a spell that hurled fire or boulders or an ice storm at them since those are real physical effects; but they could have strong resists vs unholy, holy, death.

How about +5% from Druchii or Dawi Zharr, +30% from Slavedriver (which Chaos Dwarves can also earn), and +10% from Slavery civic (otherwise slaves would add up too fast & Druchii/Chaos Dwarves will likely run Slavery constantly anyway)

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I'm fine with a 5% bonus from chaos dwarves too.
Rather than trying to link it to champion promotions, why not have slave driver just require [dark elf OR chaos dwarf] AND hero, and have a tech requirement if you're worried about it coming too soon.
Also, do hobgoblins or ogres run slave economies?

Slavedriver as written is something that can only be picked by heroes, so its gameplay effects will be minimal. Unless your intention was that slavedriver boosts the capture chance of units in the same stack as the hero?

The slavery civic bonus needs to be larger than others; it is the main source of slaves.

Otherwise, there is no point in running the civic; you'd be better off running a different civic; there is nothing atm in the slavery civic that makes slaves any better, it is simply a source of providing them. So there is no particular *synergy* in running slavery civic for dark elves atm, its simply the one that they would tend to choose fluffwise.

This will obviously take balance tweaking, but how about 15% slave chance for slavery civic?

If "magic" is simply a damage type, then dwarves should get death, unholy, holy, and poison resistance.

hobgoblins ARE the slaves, generally, so they would be quite against slavery in my oppinion. Ogres enslave the Gnoblars, so yeh they would have slavery. they could have special slave results that sacrifice them for food too.

There are a lot of great slavery ideas floating around the forum, i forget who posted them where though...

Ahriman said:

If harpies aren't aircraft, then they're too similar to manticores, which share the same unit slot.

Why does having an aerial bombardment ability imply anything about unit discipline or training or cohesion?

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Because the unit is still around after the attack.

But that is true after *any* unit fights - how is aerial bombardment different from normal combat. Do you really think that any unit of undisciplined creatures should disperse after any combat, win or lose?

I think we have to prioritize gameplay here.

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Can anyone think of ways that we can make the slavery civic actually have synergy with slave races? What new civic hooks does FF offer us?

Ahriman said:

But that is true after *any* unit fights - how is aerial bombardment different from normal combat. Do you really think that any unit of undisciplined creatures should disperse after any combat, win or lose?

I think we have to prioritize gameplay here.

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Meh not really that big of a deal I suppose.

* * *

Ahriman said:

Can anyone think of ways that we can make the slavery civic actually have synergy with slave races? What new civic hooks does FF offer us?

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There are a few things you can do, giving bonuses to buildings when you have the civicis a way to make slavery buildings anyone can build more useful to civs actually using slavery civic. I think the civicinfos has not changed between ffh2 and ff if my reading is correct. Ideas for slavery civic:

you can use the civic tags to increase/decrease food consumption. I had a module where slavery increased the food consumption from 2 per to 3 per to represent the slaves in the city. You could make the civic a prereq for units and other things. What are you ideas for the slavery civic Ahriman?

My slavery module (listed under Slavery Isn't Just Wrong, It's Profitable) for ff gave mines, quarries and plantations extra commerce, negated the happiness penalty for slavery related buildings, gave access to UUs (Slaver and Ghulam), and allowed people to buy/sell slaves even w/o Council of Esus membership.

My problem is that I really *like* the idea of slaves just being 300% workers and 30 hammer great engineers. Its simple and elegant and the AI can use it.
But neither of these effects are very amenable to being modified by buildings or a civic.

The slavery civic we had gave I think + 1 unhealth in all cities, slave capture chance from combat, whip population for hammers, and I *think* a +1 commerce bonus from mines.

But that has no synergy with other methods of capturing slaves.

The only way I can see good synergy happening is if slaves are somehow sacrificed to create permanent citizens or buildings.

There was one method we discussed before that has possibilities if we can get the AI to use it.
We create a series of slave pit buildings, like the series of Altar of Luonnotar buildings in FFH; each successive building requires the previous one, and can be created only
So slave pit 1 gives +1 unhealth, +1 food, +1 hammers.
Slave pit 2 gives +2 hammers +1 unhappy.
Slave pit 3 gives +1 unhealth, +1 food, +1 hammers.
Or something like that (and they all stack). Or make the higher ones cumulative if the lower ones are replaced (like the altars).

Is there some way that we could make the building require the slavery civic (and be removed if you ever leave the civic), but also only be buildable through sacrificing slaves?

* * *
I don't like buying/selling slaves with gold, the AI can't really handle it well. Leave them as just coming from combat. (Though we also thought of having Black Arc randomly spawn slaves if it is in territory of someone you are at war with.)

i think a combination of what you both said would work best for this mod, and i think there are 2 different alternatives we could use:

-plantations produce 1 extra commerce,
-mines and quarries produce 1 extra hammer
-slaves may be sacrificed to create:
---Slave pit 1 gives +1 unhealth, +1 food, +1 hammers, temporary duration.
---Slave pit 2 replaces slave pit 1 and gives +1 unhealth, +1 food, +3 hammers +1 unhappy temporary duration.
---Slave pit 3 replaces slave pit 2 and gives +2 unhealth, +2 food, +4 hammers +1 unhappy temporary duration.
-gives access to Slaver UU (could possibly use the command promotions to give units near it a chance to capture enemy units as slave. unit cap of 4 or 5.)

OR

-plantations, mines and quarries produce 1 extra commerce,
-slaves may be sacrificed to create:
---Slave pit 1 gives +1 unhealth, -1 food, +1 hammers, temporary duration.
---Slave pit 2 replaces slave pit 1 and gives +2 unhealth, -2 food, +3 hammers, temporary duration.
---Slave pit 3 replaces slave pit 2 and gives +3 unhealth, -3 food, +4 hammers, +15% hammer production, temporary duration.
-gives access to Slaver UU (could possibly use the command promotions to give units near it a chance to capture enemy units as slave. unit cap of 4 or 5.)

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Personally for me id go for the second option. getting extra food is beyond me (unless you eat the slaves, but i doubt that would be the case for most civs (except for Ogres who could get UB Slave Pits which dont have the food penalty)) the unhealth would be greater than unhappyness i think, because slaves in a state that condones slavery dont get a say in anything, and the likelyhood that slavers will enslave members of their own race is very slim. however having filthy dirty slaves all over the show would be quite unhygenic. the +4 hammers isnt really enough to counter the food and unhealth penalty so a 15% hammer increase would be a big addition to balance it out. then you have the improvements which export more goods and thus produce more commerce.

UBs for different civs could be:
Darkelves:
---Slave Pen 1 gives +1 unhealth, -1 food, +1 hammers, longer temporary duration.
---Slave Pen 2 replaces Slave Pen 1 and gives +2 unhealth, -2 food, +3 hammers, +5% hammer production, longer temporary duration.
---Slave Pen 3 replaces Slave Pen 2 and gives +2 unhealth, -3 food, +4 hammers, +20% hammer production, longer temporary duration.

Ogres:
---Meathangers 1 gives +1 unhealth, +1 food, +1 hammers, temporary duration.
---Meathangers 2 replaces Meathangers 1 and gives +2 unhealth, +2 food, +2 hammers, temporary duration.
---Meathangers 3 replaces Meathangers 2 and gives +3 unhealth, +3 food, +3 hammers, +10% hammer production, temporary duration.

Chaos Dwarves:
---Slave Camp 1 gives +1 unhealth, -1 food, +1 hammers, +10% unit production, temporary duration.
---Slave Camp 2 replaces Slave Camp 1 and gives +2 unhealth, -2 food, +3 hammers, +15% unit production, temporary duration.
---Slave Camp 3 replaces Slave Camp 2 and gives +3 unhealth, -3 food, +4 hammers, +20% unit production, +15% hammer production, temporary duration.

Amazonian and Araby:
---Harem 1 gives +1 unhealth, +1 happy, -1 food, +1 hammers, temporary duration.
---Harem 2 replaces Harem 1 and gives +2 unhealth, +2 happy, -2 food, +2 hammers, temporary duration.
---Harem 3 replaces Harem 2 and gives +3 unhealth, +3 happy, -3 food, +3 hammers, +10% hammer production, temporary duration.

These UBs would make these civs have a better reason for adopting slavery. and if you have a problem with AI not seeing the benefit we can easilly adjust the AI weighting

Ahriman said:

My problem is that I really *like* the idea of slaves just being 300% workers and 30 hammer great engineers. Its simple and elegant and the AI can use it.
But neither of these effects are very amenable to being modified by buildings or a civic.

The slavery civic we had gave I think + 1 unhealth in all cities, slave capture chance from combat, whip population for hammers, and I *think* a +1 commerce bonus from mines.

But that has no synergy with other methods of capturing slaves.

The only way I can see good synergy happening is if slaves are somehow sacrificed to create permanent citizens or buildings.

There was one method we discussed before that has possibilities if we can get the AI to use it.
We create a series of slave pit buildings, like the series of Altar of Luonnotar buildings in FFH; each successive building requires the previous one, and can be created only
So slave pit 1 gives +1 unhealth, +1 food, +1 hammers.
Slave pit 2 gives +2 hammers +1 unhappy.
Slave pit 3 gives +1 unhealth, +1 food, +1 hammers.
Or something like that (and they all stack). Or make the higher ones cumulative if the lower ones are replaced (like the altars).

Is there some way that we could make the building require the slavery civic (and be removed if you ever leave the civic), but also only be buildable through sacrificing slaves?

* * *
I don't like buying/selling slaves with gold, the AI can't really handle it well. Leave them as just coming from combat. (Though we also thought of having Black Arc randomly spawn slaves if it is in territory of someone you are at war with.)

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Oh yeah! My slave market (which I stole much from Ancient Mediterranean, excellent mod) added a free citizen. Regarding slavery civic prereq for a building you can only make with a slave. hmm I think you could maybe have a unit spell to do this but it would be roundabout. The slave would cast the spell (and die) spawning a building but I do not see any civic prereq in the buildings xml file so I think you would need python? Not sure I do not know anything aobut python, except it scares me...like spiders.

there are tags in the spell infos that require a certain civic i believe

Psychic_Llamas said:

there are tags in the spell infos that require a certain civic i believe

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I think so but how can we make the building go away if the civic does?

edit: how about being able to turn slave units into combat units like the Doviello? Would the AI get this? You could make it fit lorewise for Araby, Cathay, Chaos Dwarves if you capture orkies, same for Ogres.

well if we make the buildings have a limited duration then once they change civics the slave pens will automatically disappear after a few (20 at the most?) turns anyway.

but if we need them to dissapear as soon as the civics switch we can do that in python.

Psychic_Llamas said:

well if we make the buildings have a limited duration then once they change civics the slave pens will automatically disappear after a few (20 at the most?) turns anyway.

but if we need them to dissapear as soon as the civics switch we can do that in python.

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It would be sleazy to have slavery buildings temporary duration, replenished with fresh slaves but would the AI get it? (Please assassinate me for thinking like Ahriman)

OR

Python work is acceptable

Right guys? Guys?

**ERROR: Poster eaten by ravenous cave squigs**