Promotions

We need to settle a new design for Promotions. The closest thing we have is the following suggestions from Ahriman:

Some promotions ideas:
Combat 1-5
Drill 1-5
Medic 1-3
March
Intercept 1-2.
Evasion 1-2.
City attack 1-3
City defense 1-3
Flanking 1-3
Sentry 1, 2.
Suspensor disruptors 1. +20% vs suspensor units.
Suspensor disruptors 2. +20% vs suspensor units
Improved shields 1 +20% vs guardsmen units.
Improved shields 2 +20% vs guardsmen units
Armor-piercing rounds 1. +20% vs vehicles.
Armor-piercing rounds 2. +20% vs vehicles.
Anti-aircraft rockets 1. +20% vs thopters, +20% vs hornets.
Anti-aircraft rockets 2. +20% vs thopters, +20% vs hornets.
Desert warfare 1. +20% desert waste, deep desert, dunes strength. Requires sandrider promotion OR thopter class OR suspensor unit promotion.
Desert warfare 2. +20% desert waste, deep desert, dunes strength.
Guerilla 1. +20% hills strength, +20% peak strength.
Guerilla 2. +20% hills strength, +20% peak strength, double moves in hills.

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So this thread is to prompt some discussion and get us to a new design.

There are a small number of special purpose promotions such as Home Ground, Mercenary, Sandrider, etc which we need to keep anyway.

Also, one key point of the promotion design is which unitcombats can achieve which promotions, and what are the AND/OR prerequisites for the promotion.

Add to the list the current espionage ones.
Add extended range 1 and 2 (aircraft range), and collateral damage 1 and 2.
Add accuracy 1 and 2.
Add shock 1 and 2.

Dependencies (obviously each sequential promotion requires the preceding one):


Guardsmen access:


Melee:


Vehicle


Thopter:


hornet


siege class


suspensor class

I will try to throw this together today.

Current promotions not in your list, I will delete: Formation, Charge, Blitz, Guerilla III, Barrage III, Mobility, Navigation I,II, Ace.

Current promotions not in your list, I will keep anyway: Leader, Leadership, Tactics, Morale - all related to Great General

There are a couple of promotions from version 1.0 which never got renamed; this only matters to XML coders, but I will also internally rename Woodsman I and Amphibious to Stillsuit and Thumper.

Current promotions not in your list, I will delete: Formation, Charge, Blitz, Guerilla III, Barrage III, Mobility, Navigation I,II, Ace.

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I'd add blitz and mobility, vehicles should get blitz, suspensors and thopters should get mobility.
My design wasn't meant to exclude anything not on the list, it was just to throw out some ideas.

I was going to come back and bump this thread to complain that nobody had given me feedback on the new promotion implementation yet. To my surprise, it seems I never posted it. That would explain the lack of feedback.

Please unzip this on top of 1.5. It does not modify any of the same files as deliverator's various art patches, so it should co-exist. However, because there are 6-7 different sets of files, I suppose it is possible some conflict will appear.

If this seems OK, then we can turn Lord Tirian loose to make some buttons for it. I have not added any buttons, but I did spend a few minutes to pick the most suitable icons for each. You will notice some of the icons are not really very suitable, and in most cases there is a I-II progression which just reuse the same icon. These art problems can be left for later, but I'd like feedback on the game play.

A conversation about promotions came up on the screenshot thread:

slvynn said:

there are 3 types of units that aviable early at game, and they different progression of defence capabilities , strengt and time.

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ahriman said:

Soldiers are warriors, infantry are archers, quads and thopters are basically chariot/horsearchers, bladesmen are basically swordsmen/axemen.

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Slvynn said:

Nope, Our Archers can get Vanilla melee promotions, While our warriors can get CG.
Its different. Just my feedback from gameplay. Perhaps changing defence bonus and unit cost will change AI defence issues + AI rush weakness.

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It sounds like we should slightly change which promotions are available to which unitcombats. What do you suggest? The original design is above.

I dislike closing off the range of promotions. I see no reason why guardsmen shouldn't be able to get shock (bayonets, melee weapons, etc.), or improved shields (ranged units can still have shield-belts) or other similar type promotions.

If a soldier rush is too powerful, increase soldier city defence bonus up to 50%. I don't think we need to mess with the promotions by taking away options.

I think best solution is

1. what Ahriman proposing but in lower amount lets say 40% (to have difference with infantry)

2. is to making all Vs UnitCombat Class promotions aviable after certain early tech.
That means all promotions like:
improved shields
suspensor disruptors
etc
should be unlocked by some tier 3 military tech (really early) (Counter Tactics?)

I think that a new tech needed in order to unlock promotions would be a very boring tech. If you really think that this is such an early game problem, then you could shift the promotions to defense tactics, but honestly I think its just because you're playing a very very aggressive strategy on small maps with aggressive trait leaders. This can work in vanilla, too.

This could potentially also be fixed once we have tech flavors working, so that AIs understood that defense tactics was a military tech, and potentially prioritized it more.

Agree , defencive tactics is good tech for it, which also will give isntant infantries to ai.
Such warrior rushes should not be that powerfull on immortal. Even with 20 tiles gap i can take 1 of 2 cities from agressive, and take all cities from non aggressive.

About my tactics - that is the tactic i using in BTS on high difficulty levels (emperror/immortal) (Gilgamesh/Sury/Joao/Pacal/Agressive leaders), and no way my warrior rushes can be such effective. Cmon those are even not UUs, and in BTS immortal game i can allow to myself to do that only with quechuas.
Normal rushes are axe rushes or chariot rushes, but warrior rushes on immortal and total anihilation with just tier 1 simple unit? Thats not right. And promotion tree is different in DW, so it need some "delaying".
And to get to axes i need to play well through early stage, and overcome its challenges, and overcoming challenges - that is the blood of the game.

This also will give another bonus - protecting AI on such early stage will add more challenge to game, because when AI have all improvements and all worker techs and all establiesh he is less dumb. And then it can be more challenging to overcome.

And i will repeat - Long lasting challenge - long lasting player's love to the game/mod.

Just a short add-on: The Stillsuit promotion should require the tech of the same name, IMO.

The Stillsuit promotion should require the tech of the same name

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Stillsuit promotion probably needs a rethink; I don't think extra movement is really what we want here.

As was suggested elsewhere, it should maybe become a desert combat strength bonus, and have the promotion require stillsuit tech and sandrider promotion, so that only desert-capable infantry can get it.

My point was just that having a promotion of that name not requiring the equivalent tech seems the worst solution

Stillsuits should probably increase heal rate or something. you could even have it generate a small ammount of water for the nearest city when killed. desert combat bonus and requiring sandrider promotion would mean only Fremen can get the promotion? that seems wierd. i know Fremen had the best stillsuits but other civs still used them.

i think perhaps fremen should get 'Fremen Stillsuit' promotion with an additional benefit over the normal 'Stillsuit' promotion.

The idea would be that the Stillsuits promotion (or we could rename it Fremen Stillsuits) would represent superior quality suits and general tactics and know-how.

We don't need both Stillsuits and Fremen Stillsuits promotions.

I don't think faster heal-rate would be appropriate (it doesn't help your wounded recover - and if anything Fremen care less about their wounded), and I don't think that stillsuits increase the amount of water that you can render from deathstills.

Desert Warfare I,II give a combat bonus on desert. As Ahriman has pointed out, these should also probably have sandrider as a prereq, since most infantry cannot walk on desert. So, if stillsuit gives a combat bonus on desert, isn't it redundant?

Desert Warfare I,II give a combat bonus on desert. As Ahriman has pointed out, these should also probably have sandrider as a prereq, since most infantry cannot walk on desert. So, if stillsuit gives a combat bonus on desert, isn't it redundant?

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Not quite. The point is to distinguish between the desert combat promotion available to thopters and suspensors (desert warfare), and the desert combat promotion available to melee/guardsmen.

At the moment, in order to make desert warfare available to Fremen melee units, it must be a promotion that melee units can select. In order for it to be available to thopters and suspensors, it can't have a pre-requisite promotion like sandrider.
These two together mean that the desert warfare promotion is also available to non-Fremen melee units, who can never use it because they can't fight in deserts. And the AI sometimes selects the desert warfare promotion for them anyway.

So the point of having stillsuits and desert warfare both do the same thing is to get around this problem; desert warfare can be made unavailable to melee, and stillsuits can be made to require the sandrider promotion.
That way, thopters and suspensors can get a promotion, and desert-capable infantry can get the promotion, but non-desert capable infantry cannot get the promotion.
Which is the design goal.

random idea:

is it possible to limit the distance that melee units can travel into desert squares? for example melee units can't be more than 5 squares from soild rock?

if this is possible, we could allow stillsuits to remove this limit on top of desert combat, which would give such units a pretty decent advantage in mobility and exploration.

is it possible to limit the distance that melee units can travel into desert squares?

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This could be pretty confusing to human players in figuring out why they can or can't enter particular squares. Dont' we already have something where you can't enter deep desert tiles until stillsuits tech? It comes so early that you don't really notice.
Adding this restriction to Fremen units might not be a bad idea.