Mentat mechanics

I have been thinking about mentats. We gave them a Unique Resource requirement, but they are a fairly standard unit. They are a cross between a medium strength combat unit and part of a spy unit. What do you think about making them more of an economic unit? Specifically, I was thinking that each mentat unit could have a "trait" almost identical to a leaderhead trait, except it only applies to one city. You can move the mentat from one city to another like a regular unit; when it is in a city, the city benefits from the trait. When you build a mentat, you could get a popup like the one which selects offworld trade contracts, but you can choose any of:

Aggressive: Free Combat I promotion on guardsmen, melee built in the city; 2x construction speed of barracks
Charismatic: +1 happiness; +1 happiness from monument
Creative: +2 culture/turn; 2x construction speed of library, theater
Expansive: +2 health; -25% worker cost; 2x construction speed of water cache,...
Financial: +1 commerce on this city's plots with 2 commerce
Industrious: +50% wonder construction speed; 2x construction speed of refinery
Organized: -50% maintenance for this city, 2x construction speed of tribunal, weather scanner,...
Philsophical: +100 GP rate in city; 2x construction speed of university
Protective: Free City I, Drill I promotion on guardsmen, 2x construction speed of force shield, guard station

I am not sure I can implement the speed benefit for certain units/buildings, at least here is no easy way to do this for a single city, so I listed those in red. There are several trait benefits which don't make sense for a single city (Spiritual, protects against anarchy; Imperialist, increases Great General rate). Also, the Charismatic trait reduces the needed experience points for a level by 25%; this is too much work to track for units built in a single city.

Perhaps we could add some other traits, or equalize these traits with a few more abilities. For example, there is nothing which increases science production; that is an obvious one for a mentat. Perhaps +10% science output in the city, and/or a direct +5 beakers. Same idea for Industrious.

What do you think?

Interesting idea!

Thoughts:
i) mentat unit would need to have a small national limit. Maybe 4-5?
ii) remove the hidden nationality thing, that just means your allies kill them quickly.
iii) Maybe make them assassins with the FFH marksmen trait, so that they target the weakest unit
iv) I wouldn't try and mimic traits so directly, and I wouldn't try and mimic every trait (some are clearly much weaker, like +2 culture, by the time you get to mentats.
For example, you could have:
Military expert: Newly created units start with the combat 1 promotion.
Economic genius: +1 trade routes, +25% trade route yield, +25% commerce
Industrial expert: +35% hammers
Security expert: +8 espionage points, +50% espionage
Political expert: +8 culture, +50% culture

Potential problems:
a) How does the AI choose which ones to get?
b) How does the AI know to leave them in big cities?
c) How do you avoid overlap with traits? Eg a mentat who gives combat 1 to melee units is useless if you already have the aggressive trait.

I wouldn't view these as combat units. If we somehow merge in the Marksman stuff from FFH, we could put that onto some other unit. The AI for this is a challenge, but it has the advantage that the mentat would be completely controlled by a new AI routine. It is hard/impossible to modify the core part of the AI so that it can choose a new unit or an old one. But as long as the AI builds them (which can be accomplished by a high AI weight) then a new routine can choose which specialization and choose which is the best city to move them to. It is not trivial, but it would be interesting to work on.

How powerful of an effect do you want them to have compared with a specialist or a settled great person?

Ahriman's suggested types, plus perhaps a few more like Scientific expert (+25% research, or something), look good (more or less). So do the original version, although the capabilities may need to be adjusted to even them out.

If the number of types is very limited then you could either limit the number you can have to something like the number of types or you could limit it to 1 of each. If a larger number of types is used, the total number of units should probably be limited to less than the number of types unless you can only get one of each. Consider the effects of stacking multiple mentats of the same type in a city - imagine your production city with about 5 industrial experts, +35% each = +175% production just from them. Or stacking 5 of the OP's Philsophical variety for a +500% GP rate.

A mechanic you can use if you allow duplicates is to impliment a small chance for each mentat of a type for which you have more than 1 to go into the mentat freeze thing - caused by self doubt which can be brought on by being doubted by others (if you get more than one of a type then you must not fully trust their advice). Perhaps each gets someting around a (# of type)-1% chance per turn. This would cause a permanant loss of mentat abilities. Having more than one of a given type would then be a bit risky - potentially wasting the hammers used to make the one (or more) that suffers the effect.

Good points. It seems reasonable to say that only one mentat specialty per city takes effect. Similar to a limit on national wonders per city.

I like the general idea of Mentats boosting cities and Ahriman's suggested powers. The 2x construction bonuses I don't find as exciting.

1) I would prefer Mentats to be quite powerful, but be only 1 per civ. In the fiction, there is generally a single Mentat per house. For example, the Baron is pleased to capture Thufir Hawat as a new Mentat to replace Piter when he is killed. If you only get one Mentat at a time, then the choice of speciality is a more strategic choice. If you can have 4-5 at a time then the concept gets watered down IMO.

2) It would be good to have Tleilaxu 'twisted' Mentats in the game, either a UU for them or something that everyone can get controlled by a new unique resource. Not sure what their powers would be.

3) Perhaps the Military expert should give +2/+3/+4 experience to new units built in the city rather than Combat I. That gets around the stacking with other benefits issue.

Since Koma taught the AI to use the Homeworld screen probably he can help with the AI issues.

The issue with multiples was to do something from the Sapho Juice trade good. At the moment, IIRC Sapho Juice just allows the mentat assassin unit, so its pretty useless.

Also IIRC, not all mentats need or use Sapho juice, right? Does Hawat? Piter does, but I wonder if its something mostly only used by Twisted Mentats? Paul is basically a mentat and doesn't need sapho.

A possible implementation here would be to let normal houses have *1* mentat, and then Sapho juice lets you build Twisted Mentats, with a national limit of say 4.
That way, Sapho juice isn't a useless trade good.

Though ideally twisted mentats would be tied to Tlielaxu somehow.

The mentat vs twisted mentat issue should also ideally be tied into the mind training vs genetic manipulation tech paths decision.

As a Marksmen unit.... how about merging this with some ideas on the Tleilaxu Facedancer?
How about this: the facedancer is a marksmen unit, who cannot gain experience/levels as normal (like FFH golems), but automatically either steals a promotion when it kills a unit (like a FFH mimic) or just gains a promotion at random from some list.

3) Perhaps the Military expert should give +2/+3/+4 experience to new units built in the city rather than Combat I. That gets around the stacking with other benefits issue.

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Agreed.

SAPHO: high-energy liquid extracted from barrier roots of Ecaz. Commonly used by Mentats who claim it amplifies mental powers. Users develop deep ruby stains on mouth and lips.

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So it sounds like a mental stimulant like caffeine. It doesn't make sense as a prereq for Mentats, but perhaps Mentats can be even more effective if you have the Sapho resource.

(Also, I originally intended Sapho as a unique resource for Ecaz, but this was undone by Ecaz's temporary removal from the mod. Part of the uniqueness of Ecaz was supposed to be access to a number of different drug unique resources with different effects.)

Well, if we include Sapho as a trade good from a landing stage, it still needs to be at least as valuable as the others.

Maybe it should just come free from the palace, like Fremen water debt or the Bene Gesserit one?
Alternatively, we could create several national wonders for Ecaz that provided particular pharmaceutical resources; we could have one that gave sapho, one that gave elacca (that boosted melee units somehow) and so forth for various other drugs.

One way to implement a synergy with Sapho:
If the Mentats cast FFH-style "spells" in cities that create buildings (like Inspiration or Wall of Stone in FFH), then those buildings could easily have a resource affinity.
So, for example, an industrial expert could create a building that gives +35% hammers, +15% hammers with Sapho.
A political expert could give +8 culture, +50% culture, +25% culture with Sapho.
Would requires some sdk edit though.

Somewhere earlier in the offworld trade thread, I thought it was "canon" that mentats require Sapho Juice. That is why we implemented it as a required bonus for the unit. But, a quick web search shows it doubles or triples their ability, but is not required.

I like the ideas of everybody getting one, but those with access to Sapho Juice can get more, say up to three. I'm not sure how to implement that, however. Maybe it requires two units, House Mentat (national limit 1) and Mentat (national limit 2, requires Sapho).

I had originally thought of adding levels for all these abilities. Say, "Military Trainer I" adds 2 xp to all units, "MT II" adds 4 xp. Then perhaps without Sapho Juice, you could only qualify for the level I. But these are not combat units so they will not gain experience. Also if you look at spies, they have like 30 promotions due to these levels and the promotion list in the dune-o-pedia is very long as a result.

Instead of levels, we could scale the bonuses directly by whether the civ has Sapho Juice. I am pretty sure all the effects can be done in python, and it should not be hard to additionally check whether the civ has Sapho.

I like the idea of twisted mentats. We can model that as one or two additional abilities, which are only available to Tleilax. If we come up with cool ideas for these abilities and we want to make them available to more civs, then we can add a tradeable resource to make them available to friendly civs, like water debt.

One problem will be differentiating from existing specialists and great people. In general the mentat is always mobile and does not depend on population, so you can station one temporarily in a city which needs it.

Here are the existing specialist, then a slash, then great person abilities.

Merchant: 3 gold / 6 gold, 1 water
Noble: 1 beaker, 4 culture / 3 gold, 12 culture
Priest: 1 hammer, 1 gold / 5 gold, 2 hammer
Scientist: 3 beakers / 6 beaker, 1 hammer
Techman: 2 hammers / 3 hammers, 3 beakers
Spy: 1 beaker, 4 espionage / 3 beaker, 12 espionage

Perhaps these need to be normalized a little. It seems espionage is half as valuable as the others, and culture is 4x less valuable. Still, 12 culture from a great noble is larger than most wonders; it seems a little high.

Combining the traits, with Ahriman's list, and adding the idea of Sapho providing a supercharge, here is a second proposal. National unit, limit 3. Only one mentat may add to a city at a time, even if they have different specialties. I think we should try to focus on things which *cannot* be done by specialists / great people, but I do not have enough ideas yet.

Military: +3 XP for all units built in the city / +5 XP with Sapho.

Creative: +3 culture/turn or +10% culture (whichever is more) / +6 culture/turn or +20% culture with Sapho. One key usage for this unit is to drop into a city you have just captured to immediately extend cultural borders.

Civic: +2 happiness and +2 health in the city / +3 happiness and +3 health with Sapho.

Philosophical: +5 GP and +25% GP rate / +8 GP and +50% GP rate with Sapho. This is relatively boring, and there is little reason to move this mentat from one city to another.

Scientific: +5 beakers or +10% science (whichever is more) / +8 beakers or +20% with Sapho. Great Scientists can lightbulb technologies, which destroys the unit. I was thinking of a reusable, weaker lightbulb action button. Once every 20 turns, or 50 turns or whatever, the mentat has a lightbulb action which is say 50% of the full strength Great Scientist bulb. This is an additional complexity for the AI to use "well", but simply using it as soon as available would be "good enough".

Industrial: +5 hammers or +10% hammers / +8 beakers or +20% with Sapho. Could also use weaker reusable construction hurry button like great engineer.

Security: +10 espionage or +10% espionage / +20 espionage or +20% with Sapho. Also relatively boring, just like great spy.

Financial: +50% trade route yield; possibly clone the Financial trait of +1 gold for each plot over 2 gold.

Diplomat: not sure how this would work. Should provide "can enter rival territory", and when stationed in another civ's city, provides some reaction bonus over time. Not sure how to defend against this, maybe you can't?

Instead of levels, we could scale the bonuses directly by whether the civ has Sapho Juice. I am pretty sure all the effects can be done in python, and it should not be hard to additionally check whether the civ has Sapho.

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It is very important that any extra bonuses from Sapho and such be readily transparent to the player. I worry that having units with some kind of passive aura that is boosted by a particular strategic trade good will be very opaque to the player.

Splitting the mentats into 2 units is a good way to do this, and so is giving bonus yields to buildings.

Another alternative, obviously, is for the mentats to be *buildings*, rather than units. Yes, I know that sounds a little weird, but you could call them "Mentat Industrial administrator, Mentat economic overseer, Mentat military trainer" etc.
The AI understands how to choose where to construct buildings based on their output, and it understands the value of the various effects we're talking about (beakers, hammers, gold, trade, espionage points, culture, etc.).
If they aren't for fighting, and they're basically just a city unit, then why not make these national wonders?

The downside is lack of mobility, but I'm not sure how important that is.

Still, 12 culture from a great noble is larger than most wonders; it seems a little high.

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Remember that culture is weak. All it does is *slightly* expand borders if you are next to neighbors, or potentially
For a non-border city, culture is nearly useless.
So no, 12 culture is not too much.
There is also an issue with spies where the AI overvalues espionage points, so its easy to accidentally have the AI auto-
Similarly, the AI overvalues hammers, so the AI has massive preferences for the engineer specialist.

Creative: +3 culture/turn or +10% culture (whichever is more) / +6 culture/turn or +20% culture with Sapho. One key usage for this unit is to drop into a city you have just captured to immediately extend cultural borders.

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This is very, very weak.

Scientific: +5 beakers or +10% science (whichever is more) / +8 beakers or +20% with Sapho. Great Scientists can lightbulb technologies, which destroys the unit. I was thinking of a reusable, weaker lightbulb action button. Once every 20 turns, or 50 turns or whatever, the mentat has a lightbulb action which is say 50% of the full strength Great Scientist bulb. This is an additional complexity for the AI to use "well", but simply using it as soon as available would be "good enough"

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What is the gain from the lightbulbs (which need micromanagement and extra coding) rather than just straight beaker bonuses?

Security: +10 espionage or +10% espionage / +20 espionage or +20% with Sapho. Also relatively boring, just like great spy

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Very weak.

IMO, mentats should be giving major bonuses in a specialist area. They shouldn't just be dupliacting a weak ~80 hammer building, like a library.
Compare these yields to many buildings in the mod already.

Diplomat: not sure how this would work. Should provide "can enter rival territory", and when stationed in another civ's city, provides some reaction bonus over time. Not sure how to defend against this, maybe you can't?

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Consider something like the "trust" spell from FFH which instantly provides a permanent +X diplomacy modifier to all civs.
Alternatively, suppose that each turn he has a random Y% chance of improving relations with a random faction (just trigger a textless event that adds a permanent modifier).

Ahriman said:

If they aren't for fighting, and they're basically just a city unit, then why not make these national wonders? The downside is lack of mobility, but I'm not sure how important that is.

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My thought is that these units are like "troubleshooters" who can be moved to problem cities. For example, ever built a national wonder on one side of your civ, and then really wished you had built it on the other side?

davidlallen said:

Creative: +3 culture/turn or +10% culture (whichever is more)

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This is very, very weak.

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Actually I don't think this is weak. When I capture a city, it is in revolt for a few turns but until I build a culture producing building, its borders never grow. So (a) it starves fast, and (b) other nearby civ's can sneak their own settlers into the gaps. Having a mobile unit to jump-start the border expansion does not seem weak to me.

What is the gain from the lightbulbs (which need micromanagement and extra coding) rather than just straight beaker bonuses?

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Maybe nothing, it just seemed like a cool idea. I'd like each of the abilities to be something interesting enough to play another game for. Just +N% hammers seems boring.

Consider something like the "trust" spell from FFH which instantly provides a permanent +X diplomacy modifier to all civs. Alternatively, suppose that each turn he has a random Y% chance of improving relations with a random faction (just trigger a textless event that adds a permanent modifier).

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I'd like to avoid global effects for mentats, and giving a relation bonus to a random faction seems too ... random. If you agree the ability is interesting, I'd like to find a way for the player to choose who should be targeted by moving the unit into their territory. I guess it would work similar to the way spies work, but I want to avoid overlaps between spy abilities and mentat abilities.

My thought is that these units are like "troubleshooters" who can be moved to problem cities.

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Its interesting, but the AI isn't likely to use them that way.

Actually I don't think this is weak. When I capture a city, it is in revolt for a few turns but until I build a culture producing building, its borders never grow. So (a) it starves fast, and (b) other nearby civ's can sneak their own settlers into the gaps. Having a mobile unit to jump-start the border expansion does not seem weak to me.

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Mentats are late game techs.
The ability to "build culture" comes way before that.
So you could easily just put a newly conquered city to "build culture" and expand out to the second level in a turn or two.

+3 culture in a city is very weak, compared to large hammer boosters or the other bonuses.

Maybe if it could also instantly end city rebellions, but otherwise....

Maybe nothing, it just seemed like a cool idea. I'd like each of the abilities to be something interesting enough to play another game for. Just +N% hammers seems boring.

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I don't really find the "+X extra beaker boost every Y turns" any more interesting than "+Z beakers per turn).
It just takes more micromanagement.
Things are "interesting" I think only if you would actually use them different strategically.

If you agree the ability is interesting, I'd like to find a way for the player to choose who should be targeted by moving the unit into their territory.

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I don't think that moving the unit into enemy territory is a great way to do this. Why not just make it trigger an event every X turns that gives you a +1 permanent diplomacy modifiers with a faction that you pick from a list in an event dialogue box?

Ahriman said:

Its interesting, but the AI isn't likely to use them that way.

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Once I write the code, the AI will use them however I tell it. The decisions about how to use these units won't be tightly integrated with other AI decisions, but the mentats will move to the cities that need them most, and use their abilities.

The ability to "build culture" comes way before that. So you could easily just put a newly conquered city to "build culture" and expand out to the second level in a turn or two.

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Hm. Perhaps you have just improved my ability to win at vanilla civ.

I don't really find the "+X extra beaker boost every Y turns" any more interesting than "+Z beakers per turn). It just takes more micromanagement. Things are "interesting" I think only if you would actually use them different strategically.

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Well, I will certainly be happy to take any suggestions about ways to make them interesting. If I had a unit that gave +50 hammers once every 20 turns, I would try to send them to places I needed a wonder rushed or a unit built, and spend part of the recharge time travelling to the next important city.

I don't think that moving the unit into enemy territory is a great way to do this. Why not just make it trigger an event every X turns that gives you a +1 permanent diplomacy modifiers with a faction that you pick from a list in an event dialogue box?

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That might work. Actually, that is very parallel to the hammer mini-rush. Perhaps the industrial guy could have a mini-rush action button with a 20 turn recharge, and the diplomat guy could have a faction diplo bonus action button with a 20 turn recharge. From the story standpoint, it makes sense for the diplomat to be *in* a city where they could have the diplomatic effect, ie in enemy territory, but that may be too hard.

If I had a unit that gave +50 hammers once every 20 turns, I would try to send them to places I needed a wonder rushed or a unit built, and spend part of the recharge time travelling to the next important city.

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Yes, but hammers are different from beakers. For the hammers, absolutely, there is some strategy and gain from micromanaging, because with hammers it matters where you get them; a city can only build with hammers in its own cities.
But for beakers, beakers are beakers; all you need is more beakers to get the next tech, and it doesn't matter where in your empire they come from (excepting beaker buffer buildings, which wouldn't effect a lightbulb ability anyway).

A mini-hammer rush *is* interesting in a way that a mini-lightbulb effect is not.

From the story standpoint, it makes sense for the diplomat to be *in* a city where they could have the diplomatic effect, ie in enemy territory, but that may be too hard.

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I'd argue that tech is such that it is relatively easy for one guy (and maybe some staff) to be doing shuttle diplomacy going around wherever he needs to go; very different from the logistics of actually moving an army (like an in-game military unit).

Ahriman said:

Yes, but hammers are different from beakers.

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Based on that, an Industrial mentat is ok, but a Science mentat is boring. Is there any interesting mechanic you can think of for a Science mentat?

I'd argue that tech is such that it is relatively easy for one guy (and maybe some staff) to be doing shuttle diplomacy going around wherever he needs to go; very different from the logistics of actually moving an army (like an in-game military unit).

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That makes the implementation simpler, but it raises questions about why missionaries and spies have to walk, and why spies have to walk back after completing a mission, and how shuttle diplomats travel before deep desert technology allows normal units to cross deep desert.

Based on that, an Industrial mentat is ok, but a Science mentat is boring.

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If you think that it being a mobile unit that does something to a particular city, then yes, I suppose.

But on those grounds, espionage, gold, trade and others are also uninteresting.

I don't have a problem with a science mentat, its just that a science mentat could function just as easily with a % bonus, it doesn't need to be an ability that requires micromanagement every 20 turns.

Mechanics should work as simply as possible. With hammers, there is a strategic difference in only being able to activate every X turns. With diplomacy, there is a discreteness issue that means that activating every X turns is needed.
With an espionage boost or beaker boost, there is no gain in making the boost be manually activated, its just more complexity and micromanagement.

but it raises questions about why missionaries and spies have to walk, and why spies have to walk back after completing a mission

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<shrug>
Gameplay. I don't find it very important.
And its much easier for a diplomat to easily fly into another city with permission to land than for a spy to infiltrate un-noticed.

If you really need a justification; then the civs have a handful of thopters left after the Great Distaster, enough to ferry some diplomats around, but not enough to really do anything else.

Also, by the time you can get mentats, you're at the level of frigate level tech and space travel.

davidlallen said:

ahriman said:

The ability to "build culture" comes way before that. So you could easily just put a newly conquered city to "build culture" and expand out to the second level in a turn or two.

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Hm. Perhaps you have just improved my ability to win at vanilla civ.

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Well, I guess not so much. I took an extreme example by giving myself a huge stack outside an enemy secondary city and capturing it. It was pop 15 when I took it. It was in revolution for 9 turns and shrank to pop 10 before I could build anything. I put it on build culture with my global slider at +50%, and it expanded a couple of levels quickly, but it still couldn't get cultural control of most of its adjacent tiles for a while. After 5 turns of control I culture bombed with a Great Noble. That still didn't help. The city shrank to pop 5 with almost no nearby tiles controlled, before its water income and pop stabilized.

The mechanic I was trying to find is a "Reconstruction Genius", to stop that huge pop slide. Maybe a simple +cul/turn, or even "culture mini-bomb" does not accomplish this. Can anyone suggest some other mechanic to accomplish this?

It is harder than I thought to find abilities which do not duplicate buildings or specialists. Restating the abilities which have survived so far:

Military: +3 XP for all units built in the city / +5 XP with Sapho. Move it to military production cities near your current war front.

Civic: +2 happiness and +2 health in the city / +3 happiness and +3 health with Sapho. Move it to cities that are having temporary health / happiness problems.

Industrial: "mini-hurry" ability for +50 hammers once per 20 turns, more or faster with Sapho. Move it where you need a building or unit finished quickly.

Financial: +50% trade route yield or clone the Financial trait of +1 gold on worked plots with yield over 2 gold. Not all that interesting yet.

Diplomat: action button to give a +1 permanent diplomatic bonus against any chosen civ, once per 20 turns, faster with Sapho. I'd prefer to find a way to make the location of the unit relevant, but I haven't thought of one.

Reconstruction (was political or creative): Enables city to recover from revolution faster, somehow prevents pop slide after capture. Not sure exactly how this would work.

How about:

Spymaster: increases spy-catching ability in city, perhaps gives invulnerability to spies, perhaps gives invulnerability to spies for all plots in a radius. Has a small percent chance to generate a new spy unit every turn.

We can't find anything interesting in the science or culture areas. Simple +% bonuses are same as buildings, simple +/turn bonuses are same as specialists.

Is this getting too small to bother? What else should mentats allow?