Hi guys,
first of all I want to thank the current team again for keeping RaR in its new form WtP alive.
I really appreciate the great service the team does for the community.
Please also forgive if I give my 2 cents to the current discussion even though I had left the modding team due to personal / professional reasons years ago.
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Yes I have to agree that in the current state of the mod some things like "Town Guards" seem to be somewhat pointless.
But originally "Town Guards" (or actually the concept of "Blade Weapons") was just an itinary step to a much bigger concept to rebuild the combat system to be more interesting and challenging.
1) I wanted to have several very distinctive Combat Types for Units to create an interesting "Scissors / Stone / Paper" system with 4 Combat Types.
With mayor advantages / disadvantages depending on Terrain and Combat Situation (e.g. enemy Unit).
- Blade Weapons very strong for Combat in Forrests, strong for defensive Combat in Cities, some selected Blade Units (e.g. Town Guards) strong against Cavalry
- Cavalry strong in Flat Terrain, very strong against Cannons
- Cannons being used for "bombardment" with plot based damage to slowly weaken bigger stacks of units on a Tile (e.g. a City) - so Cannons would not have been able to attack in "direct" Combat like now
- Guns (in terms of Muskets) generally being alrounders and the only real useful unit for conquering towns - e.g. after Cannons would have weakened the defenses
2) I also thought about implementing the following limits for Land Combat Units / stacks depending on Tile
(All non-Combat Land Units or Ships would not have been affected.)
- Flat Terrain: 5 Units
- Hills: -1
- Light Forrest: -1
- Forrest: -2
- Mountains: -4
- Small City: +2
- Medium City: +5
- Huge City: +7
Defensive Buildings (like citadel) could have given bonuses as well.
3) I also thought about additional rules for Cannons
- Large Cannons would have needed to build up their position first for 2 additional turns before being able to bombard
- Small Cannons would have needed to build up their position first for 1 additional turns before being able to bombard
- While Cannons would have been build up they would not have been able to defend, move or attack
- Large Cannons would have been able to bombard 2 tiles away
- Small Cannons would have been able to bombard only 1 tile away
- Hills giving +1 bombardment range, Citadels in Cities giving +1 bombardment range (both to Small Cannons and Large Cannons)
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Summary:
* Cannons would have been very special purpose (bombardment of offensive stacks or City defense) that could be easily destroyed by Cavalry
* Blade Weapons would have been very special purpose (for Forrest attacks, City defense or guarding Cannons against Cavalry)
* Cavalry would have been used for destroying unprotected Cannons or charging Guns in open Terrain that had already used their attack
* Guns (Muskets) would have been the alrounders and only useful unit to conquer Cities
* The stack / tile limit would make it necessary to think more about tactics (e.g. positioning)
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So why was this not implemented?
(Even though I had already protoypes for this.)
1) People were already complaining about the complexity of RaR being too much.
2) In my prototypes AI did absolutley not understand this concept and would be crushed by Human players.
3) In my prototypes I experienced performance losses and was afraid of impacting performance too much.
4) The effort for implementation of this new systems and the risks of bug was very high
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Summary:
I fully understand why people sometimes believe that some things implemented in RaR are pointless.
But almost nothing was implemented without a plan / a reason / a concept envisioned. I simply failed to make all these visions come true.
I am also complete aware that although some people might have really liked these concepts
many others would have hated them because they would have made the game much more complex and challenging.
So maybe it is better this way.
Maybe it is better to get back to a "keep it simple" approach.