Arena for Doviello

[it-ogo]

My suggestion is to move Arena to Doviello, maybe renaming to Fighting Ring (or something), to make it 4 times cheaper, no requirements, no happiness and to make beastmen never obsolet by default.

Reasons:
1)Now Balseraphs have two contradictory ways to improve units with risk: building freaks and Arena. Too much for them.
2)Doviello are strong and aggressive and regular fights with themselves feat them good. As well as freeing slaves proved to be good fighters.
3)Arena perfectly feats Mahala's Ingenuity.

Overall I feel that arena mechanism is what Doviello need much more then Balseraphs.

Your thoughts?

 

[Nimbus]

sounds like a good start to me. the doviello seem to have lost much of their unique flavor that they once held and this would be a good start.

 

[it-ogo]

Yeah, Doviello need much more to add to be interesting. Different kinds of tundra affinity is widely discussed. Doviello are stated to be especially strong but their units in fact are of the same strength. Now with Warrens Clan is really numerous the problem is to make Doviello really strong.

Maybe Fighting Ring should provide a percentage for new units to gain Strong promotion?

Edit: Or, for balance, assuming that Doviello are strong but undisciplined, they (melee) can have Berserk promo which make them stronger but gives a chance to perform unpredicable actions in the beginning of turn, like attacking nearest enemy or pillage (if it is possible to code) - spending their movement points.

 

[TheJopa]

Doviello need something new and unique but I like arena where it is now. I'm not sure what could Doviello get. Someone proposed arena mechanic but between units on the same tile.

 

[it-ogo]

It was for Clan-Barbs and supposed to be random. Well... if we want to keep this mechanics unique then there is a choice to whom it should be given. Balseraphs are my favorite and I feel that they do not need Arena really from the gameplay viewpoint. Though flavor is nice even for Balseraphs.

 

[reveler]

I hate to loose the arena for the balseraphs, but why not give the doviello the ability whenever two at least level 2 units are on the same spot to duke it out. So somewhere in the wilderness you meet a warrior and you decide to challenge him. three possible outcomes:
1 both gain some xp
2 one gets a lot of XP other dies
3 both die, because of their wounds (this is to prevent "feeding strong warriors" to beef up others)

 

[El_Duderino]

Perhaps have the dovello units gain xp from pillaging, with a cap at 50, i like reveler's dueling idea; but i think the tundra bonuses i think should go to the illians

 

[xienwolf]

XP from pillaging could be nifty. But would have to ensure you cannot gain XP from pillaging within your own cultural borders.

 

[eerr]

XP from pillaging could be nifty. But would have to ensure you cannot gain XP from pillaging within your own cultural borders.

yea but doesn't that have the same flavor as of tasunke's raider trait?

 

[it-ogo]

Afaik The War Machine already have XP for pillaging. If we want this feature to be unique...

My heart is full of pain when I see Arena without Ingenuity.

 

[El_Duderino]

@ it-ogo - but does the war machine have a cap? (i have no idea) and if you want unique it still is civ specific and fits their theme, while the arena isnt exactly unique either
@eerr - doenst mahala (or whatever her neme is) also have the raiders trait?

 

[it-ogo]

I do not know too.

 

[Shatner]

My favorite idea for how to implement an arena mechanic for the Doviello is as follows: the Doviello have an arena building that offers all units without the Strong Promotion the option of attempting the challenge. There is some flat percentage (I'm unsure how generous to make it but certainly no more than 50%, probably something like 30 or 40) that the unit will succeed. Success gains the unit the Strong Promotion and failure gains the unit the weak promotion. Then make it so all Doviello units with the weak promotion can be transformed into slaves. This fits the Doviello theme and offers them a way to cannibalize their military to improve their infrastructure (making tile improvements or simply rushing building production). This arena building should probably be cheap and low tech OR you could simply make this a function of the Doviello Palace. My only concern is preventing this from becoming an abusable strategy for creating workers for cheap. The best rate of exchange from this is to have a Beastman (25 hammers) turn into what is effectively a half speed worker (75 hammers/2 = 37.5). Here we can see it is slightly imbalanced hammer-wise so I'm asking you all what you think.

As an aside, I like the mechanic of offering the Doviello XP for razing enemy improvements. If the War Machine has an upper-cap in place for this XP gain then this shouldn't be too hard to implement.

 

[MagisterCultuum]

I don't think that the Doviello should have a building with this ability. I think that it would be good for any leader with the Barbarian trait to be able to have his units fight each other for xp, probably damaging and possibly killing one or both units on the tile (like reveler said). It doesn't make sense to me that barbarian civs should be more peaceful and not be able to get as much xp from fighting (because of being at peace with the barbs)

I actually suggested reveler's proposal quite a while back as a very common random event (but preferably not with the usual popups though, since it could be tedious. Perhaps as a randomly auto-casting spell?)

 

[Shakiko]

Edit: Or, for balance, assuming that Doviello are strong but undisciplined, they (melee) can have Berserk promo which make them stronger but gives a chance to perform unpredicable actions in the beginning of turn, like attacking nearest enemy or pillage (if it is possible to code) - spending their movement points.

How about a plain, simple (and prolly boring ) extrapromotion for all Doviello-units.
Something like +20% STR (or +1 fixed Att str, like dextrous) on attack (great strength) and -10 or -20% STR (or -1 fixed Def str) on Defense (unorganized barbarians rushing into combat) ?

It's not perfect and abit bland, but would at least grasp that "strong barbarians"-theme and is easy to implement ?

 

[Shatner]

I don't think that the Doviello should have a building with this ability. I think that it would be good for any leader with the Barbarian trait to be able to have his units fight each other for xp, probably damaging and possibly killing one or both units on the tile (like reveler said). It doesn't make sense to me that barbarian civs should be more peaceful and not be able to get as much xp from fighting (because of being at peace with the barbs)

I actually suggested reveler's proposal quite a while back as a very common random event (but preferably not with the usual popups though, since it could be tedious. Perhaps as a randomly auto-casting spell?)

I'm a little confused; do you find my idea too peaceful because there isn't threat of unit death or because it only involves one unit interacting with a building? Or are the Barbarian civs peaceful because they can't fight randomly spawning barbs? If it's the latter, I've found plenty of XP awaits me in the invasion of other civilizations, even if I'm only taking attacks of opportunity. Then again, I never cared much for my diplomatic standing when playing as Charadon.

I agree that having two adjacent Doviello units randomly engaging in a brawl would be better thematically but that seemed like a much more difficult mechanic to implement, though I will confess that I know little about the event code.

It brings up several complications, though. First off you have to be able decide which units are involved which might not be clear if you have stacks of them. Also, how do you determine who wins the competition? If its a flat, random chance between units then you'll have the 0xp newbie unit killing the highly promoted unit just as often as not. If you make it simulate genuine combat then highly promoted units can engage in brawls repeatedly and gain lots of xp with very little personal risk.

At the very least, I'd prefer if the event or whatever contained an inherent exit flag to ensure it wasn't (ab)usable repeatedly. That's why I prefer it granting the Strong promotion to actual XP. Then you can have the event or building or unit ability not be possible for Strong promoted units. If you don't like the Weak Promotion-slave mechanic then failure can simply lead to unit death. Heck, victory should probably halve the unit's health anyway...

 

[reveler]

....

I actually suggested reveler's proposal quite a while back as a very common random event (but preferably not with the usual popups though, since it could be tedious. Perhaps as a randomly auto-casting spell?)

Got me there, but I found it a good idea then and it stuck. Usually my Doviello cities are pretty void of buildings. I see them more as large camps.

@odds for fighting
Why not give eevry unit a 40 chance to die whatever their promotions? so you can tilt the scales for stronger units, but 40% is still a viable chance to loose that unit.
I have no idea of XML so implementation suggestions are beyond me atm.

 

[TheJopa]

I Espana 1936 mod, just before civil war begins, your units start fighting each other in cities. Someone might look at the code.
Basically you get message 'Fighting between Nationals and Republicans broke out in Cordoba' Followed by standard combat message: While defending, your Republican Guard has defeated your Infantry
For Doviello this should probably be limited to only low level units. Or that units above certain level cannot die in such combats.

 

[Lord Bayushi]

I love the idea of giving more flavor back to the Doviello, I miss them being a competitive civ. I think that the arena function with strong and weak promotions is great (make it a function of an existing building though, like a training yard), but I think that it should go further.

You should just be able to sacrifice any Doviello weak promoted units to increase production (al-la slaves), and that strong promoted Doviello units should have a function (similar to vampires) to destroy any non-strong promoted unit in their tile for xp (giving a bonus for destroying units with the weak promotion this way). Cap the gain for non-weak promoted units at lvl 8 or so, and the cap the xp for weak promoted units at 100 xp. All Doviello slaves created through combat with the slavery civic should be automatically weak promoted.

In addition, I think that Doviello should be able to build wolves with a hunting lodge (make them cheaper than scouts, and give them the ability to promote to strong), and that beastmen should be able to have the subdue animal promotion.

I think that all of these changes would reflect the flavor of the Doviello civ.