Unit Design

Why do you want to change something about the DE and HE land forces ? I tested both recently, and they seemed okay to me, the DE being really powerfull once their crossbowmen and lizards come into action. I don't think both of them need anything more ATM, in facts we will maybe need to tone the various elves down once we will have done the other factions.

I don't think we can use civ 4 flying system to represent flyers, mostly because it seems strange for something not reaching 500 km/h to strike at several spaces from it's base, then getting safely back to it's city. The current system used is to make all squares cost 1 for flyiers, and giving them a big movement. It gives them enougth mobility to avoid being easily attacked. The only downside is that they can be attacked and destroyed by gound troops, but as they are 'normal' animals, they do need to rest from time to time.
The best would be to have a system like civ 2, where flyiers weren't based into a city, but couldn't be attacked by standard ground troops.
 
A further suggestion for Dark Elves (and maybe High elves, wood elves); take 1 movement off their cavalry and chariot units.
Having the bonus +1 movement on infantry is very strong, but making chariots and knights 3 moves and light cavalry 4 moves is just sick.

I think the civ4 system for flyers works very well for weak flyers.
Weak flyers should be harassing units, attacking supply lines, stragglers etc. and generally disrupting enemy units. This is exactly what the fighter unit strafing run does.

This also makes these units valuable; as it stands pegasai and such are pretty much useless except for exploiting dumb worker AI by killing all their workers. 5 strength can't really kill much of anything past the very early game, and unlike other tier1 units they don't upgrade to anything.

Remember that a game turn represents a year or more, so airspeed isn't really an issue.

I hated the civ2 system for flyers. For fighter units, the effects were basically the same (fighters have to move and return in the same turn) but for bombers it was ridiculous - bombers spent in between turns (weeks, months?) hovering in space in enemy territory.
It was also very easy to exploit; put a mechinf on the same tile as your bomber, and watch as the AI threw all its fighters at the bomber trying to kill it only to end up fighting the mechinf.

Remember that the national caps on flyers in this mod are all pretty low (5 max), so its not as if you can build a massive airforce to conquer the world. All you'll be doing is a bit of damage to units out in the open. If nothing else, it also encourages players to bring archers with your offensive stacks, to discourage/shoot down flyers.
 
I wonder how you do explain why infantry can only move a square each year ? Alexander had his infantry cross half a continent in 5 years, with several battles and some time to rest. To be realistic, infantry should have 5 to 10 movement points, and the cavalry 10 to 20.(the exact number should vary with map size)

The point is that in WH flyers directly engage in battle, they don't drop bombs and then retreat to safety, so civ 4 system for flyers seems to me inacurate. They get into close combat with the ennemy, who can then kill them. If we use civ 4 system for flyers, will we give any unit an intercept chance ?

Civ 2 system is bad for modern equipment representation, but it would be great to simulate pegasai and other medieval flyers.
 
I wonder how you do explain why infantry can only move a square each year ? Alexander had his infantry cross half a continent in 5 years, with several battles and some time to rest. To be realistic, infantry should have 5 to 10 movement points, and the cavalry 10 to 20.(the exact number should vary with map size)

Obviously the "scale" of movement isn't exact; there is inherently a mismatch between population growth/tech rates vs army movement rates for gameplay purposes.
But imagine that each turn was a month or a couple of weeks. The movement speed (particularly in enemy territory, without roads) of land units in civ represents the rate of advance of an army.

Anyone can tell you that an army generally advances at a much slower rate than its movement rate. Even if you can walk 30 miles in a day, an ancient army can normally only advance a few miles per day; they have to set up camp at the end of the day and disassemble it in the morning, they can't move faster than their supply wagons or their slowest units, they have to scout ahead to avoid ambushes, they have to carry their gear with them.
Even if you could drive from Paris to Berlin in several hours, it will take much longer for an army of tanks and APCs to advance that far.

Alexander is the exception that proves the rule; his rates of advance were still basically unmatched (bar Mongols, maybe) until the 20th century.

My understanding of WH flyers in tabletop is that they can only be engaged by ranged units, air units or the models they are actually fighting. If some pegasai swoop down to attack a weak unit in the rear, only that unit can hurt them; they can't suddenly be engaged by the entire army, including the powerful front line troops.
I think this is modelled much better by diminishing army strength through the strafing run mission to weaken an army than it is by forcing air units to attack the strongest unit in an army stack (which is what happens in the status quo).
Another alternative would be to give them the Marksmen promotion, but I'd prefer to leave that to assassins. That promotion is already over-powered in this mod, given the low defence strengths of siege units and the high strength of the assassin units. We should include the (announced) FFH marksmen updates so that they don't target siege units or equipment.

Playability is king. Strength 5 pegasai units have a very small window of usefulness in the current mod - except for killing worker units, which is not exactly in-theme either. Making them aircraft makes them much more useful.
If Civ encouraged spreading units out into a line of battle then a mobile unit that could attack weak points would be workable. But it doesn't; civ combat encourages use of large stacks, where the strongest defender fights against all-comers. This makes it much harder to implement units whose role is to target weak spots.
 
Personnaly, I always use several small stacks of rapid troops to take out cities that are not properly defended, maneuver is king in warfare, and this is true too in civ. They also get some attention (read : too much) from the AI, distracting them from the real problem my main army represents. They can be added to your main combat groups, hunting down fleeing ennemy troops.
But I agree they are limited, especially when they get obsolete.

Making them aircraft is so much out of fluff, normally they are seldom seen on WH battlefields, occasionally used as mounts for heroes. There are no regiments of pegasai or griffins in WH, they are rare . That is why I think they shouldn't be used as aircrafts anyway. They are not numerous enougth to have an impact strategically speaking.

We should maybe create commander units for every factions, limited in numbers, but giving bonuses to other troops and/or being great fighters, and mounted on a horse/griffin/dragon/whatever, the mount getting better when tech progresses. The availability of various mounts would be based on what they have access to in army books. It would better fit the background of WH than pseudo bombers.
 
and it would cause a problem with Pegasus being able to board a ranger.
 
I meant that it would be one unit. ie : commander on horse, who upgrades to commander on pegasai, then to commander on griffin....
Each type of commander should be increasingly limited in number, and increasingly powerfull and/or usefull.
 
if you haven't noticed about all my knowlage comes from Undead. so to interupt agin on a topic you will just come back to my post for is.

maybe undead has 1 less str except spellcasting undead.
Undead cost less to make.
1/2 standerd upkeep for undead units except spellcasters. (don't have to eat no family don't have to be paid do have to supply with weapons, armor and reserch material.)
Fear is 50% chance for each unit to run instead of 100%.
undead = free Fear promotion.
undead can't heal by themselves.
a Necro I spell to heal Undead.
Undead cost allot less except casters.
Necromancers, Master Necromancers and Liches get + Str.
become a Lich spell moved to Necro III.
Necromancer and Master Necromancer cost allot more.

Fear as is is almost useless, it only works in the open doesn't work when attacking a town. if you make Fear 50% then it will be kinda safe to effect towns also. (no attacking a town with 1 weak undead dieing but running 100% of the opponents out of town letting your unmoved army take the city.) (instead a few have to be used some run some stay to continue the fight. and even if the town went empty that just means if it wasn't the last town that there is a army already beside town to take it back.) but I like Fear it can be some use when it works good and it could be bad when it doesn't, especaly when your core units are weaker than everyone elses core units.
 
Personnaly, I always use several small stacks of rapid troops to take out cities that are not properly defended, maneuver is king in warfare, and this is true too in civ

I disagree. Manuever is practicalyl useless in civ. The main advantage of high movement units is that you can move them rapidly within your empire, and that you can use them to kill units and then move back into the protection of your superstack. Manuever is relatively weak in civ vs most wargames; superstacks are king (especially vs the AI that is ineffective at using anti-stack weapons like bombardment, collateral damage and magic).
Consider a pegasus vs fortified bronze working archer warband in city (no hill), with 20% culture/wall defences.
Strength 5 pegasus vs
Strength 4+25%fortification+25%citydefencebonus+20%walls+first strikes.

You're not going to be capturing cities with pegasai, at least not on hard difficulty levels.

They can be added to your main combat groups, hunting down fleeing ennemy troops.

There are no fleeing troops in civ. Injured troops just hide in the big stack and heal once in a city. The AI doesn't flee with injured units unless it has no stack left (ie you've already killed the powerful stack defender units).

and it would cause a problem with Pegasus being able to board a ranger.

Ideally I would eliminate hawks from the game. They are far too useful - making exploration a cinch especially if there are peaks around (by reconning a peak, you get vision like 10 tiles in every direction).
 
Ideally I would eliminate hawks from the game. They are far too useful - making exploration a cinch especially if there are peaks around (by reconning a peak, you get vision like 10 tiles in every direction).

:crazyeye: I kinda felt they was a exploit but I can't help using them especially on the back of a moving ranger.
 
Arhiman : and what about flying units, are you still thinking this mod should allow for regiments of pegasai and other griffins ?

Making them aircraft is so much out of fluff, normally they are seldom seen on WH battlefields, occasionally used as mounts for heroes. There are no regiments of pegasai or griffins in WH, they are rare . That is why I think they shouldn't be used as aircrafts anyway. They are not numerous enougth to have an impact strategically speaking.

We should maybe create commander units for every factions, limited in numbers, but giving bonuses to other troops and/or being great fighters, and mounted on a horse/griffin/dragon/whatever, the mount getting better when tech progresses. The availability of various mounts would be based on what they have access to in army books. It would better fit the background of WH than pseudo bombers.

I meant that it would be one unit. ie : commander on horse, who upgrades to commander on pegasai, then to commander on griffin....
Each type of commander should be increasingly limited in number, and increasingly powerfull and/or usefull.

And I play on monarch difficulty, and I found that because of the AI tendency to have super stacks it is easy to attack elsewere while taking down its stack slowly, with the weapons you just described (bombers, artillery). That is especially true of mods with ranged bombardment
 
Arhiman : and what about flying units, are you still thinking this mod should allow for regiments of pegasai and other griffins ?

Yes, I haven't seen anything here that would change my mind.

I wouldn't say they are *regiments*. But yes, a group of monsters - the same way that monsters are currently implemented (is that a regiment of trolls? of giants?)
I would say that the existing pegasus unit, and a few others, should be aircraft.
A chaos furies unit, a vampire bats unit, whatever tier1 monster flying units should be fighters.
They can perform recon runs, and they can perform a strafing run that damages the top unit in a stack to a moderate limit.
They have limited range, and they can be intercepted by other fighter units on an interception run mission, and by other flying units which get a SAM trooper-style intercept chance.

Gyrocoptors, and maybe harpies or a few others could function as bombers, and actually do collateral damage.

Griffons in warhammer are tough enough that they are a mainline combat troops; they should stay as currently implemented. Similarly for dragons, manticores, Lammasu if ever implemented, etc.

There are low national limits on all of these, so no nation will ever be able to field a large airforce.

I find that, playing on emperor or immortal difficulties mostly, aircraft are something that the AI often uses well enough such that they are an effective anti-stack weapon. The AI doesn't really use catapult/artillery bombardment effectively, but they can use fighters and bombers in a decent sense. Giving the AI something that reduces the power of my superstack is a Good Thing IMO.
 
I noticed Lahmia and Tomb Kings are currently not alowed skeletal horsemen.
everyone in WH that can make a skeleton can make a skeletal horseman.
it also just dawned on me that I'm useing Skeleton archers on Lahmia and in WH no Vampire has skeletal archers and only Von Carstein (Sylvania) is known to use human archers he also uses swordmen crossbowmen and longbowmen. (another reason to group Necrarchs witch are better spellcasters to Lahmia) (and no unique archer for any Vampire helps balance the power of their Vampire units)

LOL Vampires get a very weak core for better limited to a few stronger than normal units.

I think the only liveing thing in Vampire armys are Ghouls, bats and archers (Sylvania only on archers)

Dire Wolves, Fell Bats, Nightmares and winged Nightmares are classified as Undead.

ok I looked up Vampire Counts my book is out of date I don't see Necromancers or skeletal horsemen listed for any Vampire Count from what I read about the new rules and army core online (I need to get the new book I hope they didn't take away Necromancers but it does sound like they made Necromancy spells stronger witch is good) ( just going to be a pain to not have many spellcasters do to a limit on the amount of Vampires you can play and lack of Necromancers)

oh in my book Blood Dragons can have seletal Bowmen on foot and Lamians can have any male hero from any book (the hero is the female Lamians Swain <he is permenitly smiten by her>)

maybe they made it so only Necrarchs have Necromancers (in the back story they are the only ones that taught Necromancy to non-Vampires.
 
Wow that's quite a series of units! I think I will defer to P_L & Ahriman's longer experience and think we should go ahead with implementing something similar to this list, the aim being to get an army framework in place for playtesting so it can be further improved/modified going forward.

I like having some race-specific promotions, but agree those Hatred ones could seem to mostly cancel out - maybe something like a minus to withdrawal chance would make sense? I think we should nudge the automatic Elven promotion to +1 First Strike Chance; I still think getting this plus Mobility on all units for 10% extra is a bargain and it could be 15%. (Remember that the Vassal civic costs 10% extra for 2 XP.) Keeping Mobility is fine, but it could make sense as Ahriman suggested to tone down base moves on high end cavalry to compensate. Druchii/Asrai should get a big specific diplo effect with each other ie "Past events have proved your bad nature to us" if they haven't already; I don't know if it's possible to remove the diplo bonus for sharing a religion.

Regarding unit hammer costs, it will take time and playtesting to balance these; I guess the best approach is to try to set hammer costs at what you think is fair based on the individual unit's stats/abilities, and hope that the racial +10-15% manages to balance with the added advantages from the free racial promotions. If there is a military unit that does not get the First Strike or Mobility advantages, this could be taken into account.

I think it could be very appropriate to try having Chaos Furies and Dark Elf Harpies as short-range air units with fighter-like attack and recon abilities - the Harpies especially are known for patrolling around their citadels and sniping at rebel slave warbands, etc. They should be weak with a fairly short range of attack from their base city.

It would also be appropriate for Griffons/Pegasi to have the SAM-like intercept chance to thwart enemy fliers but not have "strafing"/"bombing" runs etc. The griffons are probably best with a single figure in the unit, I think it's true that they are very rare and solitary creatures, usually found as mounts for powerful heroes. It could be simplest just to have griffon/pegasus/dragons capable of carrying a hero unit - creating a separate unit type for every possible hero in each mounted and unmounted form sounds like it would be very hard to implement and keep track of, but it also sounds like it could work if you really managed to accomplish it.

I liked FfH Hawks mainly because I find sea exploration etc boring - they are not an in-flavor WH unit, maybe once there are more fliers & perhaps a end-of-game tech that revealed the world map I wouldn't miss them.
 
I think we should nudge the automatic Elven promotion to +1 First Strike Chance

Agreed.

still think getting this plus Mobility on all units for 10% extra is a bargain and it could be 15%

Well, not quite the full picture for High Elves; the food penalty also ******s growth significantly. Racial balance is based on the whole picture; "elven popualtion" effects, elven promotion, unit/tech access, magic, religion, etc.

As it stands I think High Elves (with the food penalty) are roughly ok, Dark Elves are definitely too strong.

Adjusting the cavalry/chariot speed is easy; just take 1 movement off the UU stats for these units and leave them with the +1 move elven promotion.

Regarding unit hammer costs, it will take time and playtesting to balance these; I guess the best approach is to try to set hammer costs at what you think is fair based on the individual unit's stats/abilities, and hope that the racial +10-15% manages to balance with the added advantages from the free racial promotions. If there is a military unit that does not get the First Strike or Mobility advantages, this could be taken into account.

Agreed.

It could be simplest just to have griffon/pegasus/dragons capable of carrying a hero unit

I like the flavor of dragons carrying heroes, but I doubt the AI will ever use it, or using it intelligently, so I'd suggest not expanding it further to other units. Also, specific heroes can be hard-coded to have their tier3 version be mounted on a flying unit, as appropriate.
Eg: tier1 hero = 1 move, on foot
Upgrades to tier2 hero, 2 moves, on horse
Upgrades to tier3 hero, 3 moves flying on griffon.

Also, since (I think?) cargo dies when a unit is killed, having a 5-strength pegasus mount (or even 10-strength griffon) is pretty dangerous.
Pegasi to have the SAM-like intercept chance to thwart enemy fliers but not have "strafing"/"bombing" runs etc

Pegasai have a very short window of usefullness before their strength 5 becomes obsolete. Strafing run makes them more interesting and useful, without being OP.
 
I thought about it some more, and here's an idea about how to handle mounts that I think could actually work really well.. :

The mountable units like Pegasus and Griffon could have a spell, Act as Mount, that would grant an appropriate promotion (ie Gryphon Mount, Pegasus Mount) to an eligible hero in the same square, and remove the unit being mounted. The mounted promotions could give appropriate benefits to the hero specific to the type of creature being ridden. If desired, the mounted hero could gain a spell Dismount that would remove the promotion and create the appropriate creature as a unit in the square again (checking the creature cap to prevent exploits.)

This would solve the problem of hero units being vulnerable if carried by another unit and not getting benefits from doing so; the disconnect of having Gryphon/Pegasus units available that can never actually be ridden; and the issue of having to deal with implementing multiple versions of every hero to represent all possible states of mountedness, which would also lock heroes into a preset mount choice.

If you still want to go with a set of separate units to show different stages of the same hero, that could still be done, the promotion system would add flexibility in mount choice and the realism of only being able to mount units your empire had access to. It should also be possible to specify what heroes are eligible to ride certain mounts. In the WHFB game, even lesser heroes can often gain a mount if you choose to spend on it, and this would enable something more like that.

So what do you think? Here are some preliminary mount ideas, please edit & add your own:


Warhorse
+1 Movement, +2 :strength:, +1 Extra First Strike Chance, movement penalty in swamps and wetlands, cannot enter marsh
This promotion could be obtained by visiting a city with Stables; dismounting would remove the mounted promotion but not create a unit. For some nation renowned for its legendary purebred horses (Araby?), we could create a unique Stables that granted a special horse promotion. There could even be different types of mount available to choose from using the FfH system for crew promotions available in port for ships, though I think this isn't really necessary. If we were to add some of the negative aspects of other mounted units (penalty in forests, no defensive bonus, etc) then it would become an interesting decision in certain situations whether to ride into battle or not.

Dire Wolf Mount, Boar Mount (unique mounts for Greenskins)
suggestions?

Pegasus Mount
2 movement, Flying, Sentry, +1 First Strike Chance, +25% Withdrawal Chance, Intercepts Air Units

Griffon Mount
2 movement, Flying, Sentry, +3 strength, +1 First Strike, +25% Withdrawal Chance, Intercepts Air Units



Disc of Tzeentch
(promotion available to Sorcerers via spell, rather than a mountable unit)
3 movement, Flying, Sentry, +25% withdrawal chance

any ideas for other possible mounts? (unique Chaos mounts? Dragon Mounts based on the dragon units?)
 
I dunno... any system like this is never going to be understood by the AI.
I think a fundamental tenet of design is to keep anything the AI can't understand at all to at least a moderate power level. (Spells are pwoerful but hopefully the AI can at least slightly understand them.)

I really would suggest that you keep hero units and beast/monster units separate; you can capture the flavor of having mounted heroes by just making some heroes fly and giving them art on top of a griffon or boar or unicorn or whatever. I think this is mainly for aesthetic/cosmetic purposes - I don't really see any game design advantages of trying to separate mounted from unmounted heroes.
Heroes will be complex enough - FFH heroes are fun and they mostly have no special abilities at all, let alone some cool equipment.

PL seems to want a tiered hero system, and I have no problem with that in principle; it lets you combine both the fun of having access to heroes in the midgame AND having them be freakin powerful in the late game with abilities and cool equipment. It would be hard to make this balanced

And its probably doable to tell the AI to cast its "upgrade this hero to tier3" spell whenever it meets the tech requirements for doing so, so even the AI could get tier3 heroes, assuming it doesn't get them butchered in the meantime (as it tends to do).
 
A further suggestion for Dark Elves (and maybe High elves, wood elves); take 1 movement off their cavalry and chariot units.
Having the bonus +1 movement on infantry is very strong, but making chariots and knights 3 moves and light cavalry 4 moves is just sick.

thats a good balance suggestion.

Making them aircraft is so much out of fluff, normally they are seldom seen on WH battlefields, occasionally used as mounts for heroes. There are no regiments of pegasai or griffins in WH, they are rare

what do you mean?? i ALWAYS use flyers in my armies, unit of 8 war hawks and my green dragon in my woodelves army, and 2 units of 4 terradons in my lizardman army, and 6 carrion in my khemri army. they are often the units which turn the game in my favour too. im inclined to agree with Ahriman at this stage, but im still pretty much on the fence.

I noticed Lahmia and Tomb Kings are currently not alowed skeletal horsemen.

those to civs are barely fleshed out (pun intended) so rest assured you will see skeleton horsemen when we get to working on them ;)

I think we should nudge the automatic Elven promotion to +1 First Strike Chance; I still think getting this plus Mobility on all units for 10% extra is a bargain and it could be 15%. (Remember that the Vassal civic costs 10% extra for 2 XP.) Keeping Mobility is fine, but it could make sense as Ahriman suggested to tone down base moves on high end cavalry to compensate. Druchii/Asrai should get a big specific diplo effect with each other ie "Past events have proved your bad nature to us" if they haven't already; I don't know if it's possible to remove the diplo bonus for sharing a religion.

I like the flavor of dragons carrying heroes, but I doubt the AI will ever use it, or using it intelligently, so I'd suggest not expanding it further to other units. Also, specific heroes can be hard-coded to have their tier3 version be mounted on a flying unit, as appropriate.
Eg: tier1 hero = 1 move, on foot
Upgrades to tier2 hero, 2 moves, on horse
Upgrades to tier3 hero, 3 moves flying on griffon.

Agreed 100% on both points

PL seems to want a tiered hero system, and I have no problem with that in principle; it lets you combine both the fun of having access to heroes in the midgame AND having them be freakin powerful in the late game with abilities and cool equipment. It would be hard to make this balanced

its more of a hero upgrade path idea so that early game heroes arnt obsoleted quickly like in FfH (i find playing as civs whos heroes are early units (ie ljosalfar, Austrin)that the heroes suck atrociously after other units advance in techs. like you say it would require a fair bit of balancing but i think it would be fun :)
 
like you say it would require a fair bit of balancing but i think it would be fun

That was actually a thought I didn't complete.... I meant to say it would be hard to make this balanced WITHOUT using a tiered hero system.

With the tiered system its much easier to balance, because you can restrict high power units to have a high tech requirement. Its a good design decision, as long as the AI can be programmed to upgrade.
And it will be fun. Fun is key :)

I'm unsure about whether the hero system needs 2 tiers or 3 tiers - I would be inclined to drop off the tier 1. Heroes will be pretty weak at tier1, and so I'd be worried about the AI losing them, so they never survive to get the tier2 and 3 versions.

Another possibility would be to make all 3 tiers buildable. So if you build the tier1 and then upgrade to tier2, you have an advantage of having been around to gain XP for a while. But if you didn't build the tier1 version, or if you're the AI and you stupidly got them killed, you can still build the tier3 version and get a hero, but they start with 0xp rather than having 60+xp by now.
 
as long as the AI can be programmed to upgrade.
And it will be fun. Fun is key :)

*hitler voice* THEY VILL BE PROGRAMMED AND THEY VILL ENJOY IT!

Another possibility would be to make all 3 tiers buildable.

but that would mean each hero could have 3 lives O_o

EDIT: fixed spelling mistakes. im drunk btw :D

EDIT 2: fixed more spelling mistakes lol
 
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