Some suggestion about Recon Units.(To give them unique abilities)

[azum4roll]

If the disparity between the first “super scout” and all other scouts is too great, we could cap XP from exploration, or simply slow it down (ie more tiles needed to reveal for 1 XP).

Or we use a super hacky way:
Save the max amount of XP gained from scouting among all recon units
If the unit with the max scouting XP dies and you build a new recon unit, it gains that amount of XP.
Then everyone will have exactly one super scout at any given time

EDIT: What Exploration Heritage does is probably better, but the XP shouldn't be granted only after combat.

 

[pineappledan]

I could be convinced that there is something wrong with the Scout's mobility, but these arguments about how the double movement promotions make them fast cut no ice with me.

1. Now Scouts are running 2 times faster in desert/snow/hill with forest than plains/grass without any feature. Even Modern Amor with 5 movement can't catch up with them in flat desert.

That fails to establish that there is any problem with them being fast in the first place. They are quick in difficult terrain. So what?
Mounted and armor units are a lot stronger than recon units; Why should they also be faster in all situations?

2. With high movement and ignore ZOC, they can escape from enemy easily and make Survivalism less appealing

Ok? Survivalism's strong defense and ability to heal through major damage without forcing your unit to stop makes Trailblazer less appealing.
This fails to make a substantial argument that the situational benefits of the TB line actually threaten the survivalism line, which simply has different utility, and is much more valuable in the mid-late game

3. In late game we often have a big empire, with many inland tiles far from enemies. But in early game, we often have sparse cities only, all the borderland are vulnerable. It's difficult to have enough units to cover every tile.

Why should you be able to have a perfect borderland with no holes? Sounds like good tactics to me.
If the AI outmaneuvered you and was able to do significant damage to your infrastructure then it sounds like you got outplayed.

That's not to say I that I don't have some issue with the current scout/TB line:
- We have tried to make the skirmisher line be defined by its high mobility and low damage, as the line that excels at harassing and disrupting civilians/infrastructure. That means the scout and skirmisher lines overlap significantly in their stats and niche.
- The scout line goes from exploration units to conventional combat unit in Industrial, and then to teleporting pillager unit in the late game. Meanwhile, the skirmisher line moves from high-mobility harasser to mainline, anti-armor combat unit in Modern. The two swap rolls, which means their promotions have to facilitate both. That's a tall order, and I don't know if lots of movement options actually gives them a niche other than being a bag of tricks with no real focus.

So what unit stat niche do scout line units potentially occupy that other unit lines neglect? The most obvious answer is vision. But can you make a whole line out of that?

 

[CppMaster]

If the disparity between the first “super scout” and all other scouts is too great, we could cap XP from exploration, or simply slow it down (ie more tiles needed to reveal for 1 XP).

Also, moving some strengths from promotions to the base of the unit line would reduce the disparity. Scouts after the 1st one is trash anyway.

 

[stii]

The issues with a scout in the hands of a human is you can harass with no danger. They can hide on mountains, move in pillage trade routes and move back onto the mountains. There is simply nothing you can do to protect from this is there are enough mountains close enough. An AI won't ever do this because it is too complicated but as a human you can do this kind of thing pretty easily.

To a less degree you can move into rough terrain and pillage anything and you need an awful lot of units to prevent this.


I see scouts as being used to find new lands and similar. Later on they have no purpose but that is fine. They shouldn't be able to pillage things so easily.

 

[Tekamthi]

They can hide on mountains, move in pillage trade routes and move back onto the mountains. There is simply nothing you can do to protect from this is there are enough mountains close enough.

partially a side-effect of "ignore terrain cost" -- with that promo, recon can move across an entire mountain range in one turn -- without, the first mountain ends recon's turn

 

[ma_kuh]

Scouts working as budget skirmishers seems like a healthy post-exploration combat space for the line. They use exceptional mobility to provide flanking from angles even skirmishers can't achieve, and with the new Screening operate as x2 bodies too. As much as I agree that rough terrain movement outpacing flat terrain is a little nonsensical, I also don't think it's breaking the bank.

 

[t99KJwEd]

What if recon units up to and including Explorers couldn't pillage? When the exploration stage of the game is over they get pillaging back. Until then they can militarily be medics/flankers/civilian capturers.

 

[Tekamthi]

What if recon units up to and including Explorers couldn't pillage? When the exploration stage of the game is over they get pillaging back. Until then they can militarily be medics/flankers/civilian capturers.

would be nice to have a promotion feature to block pillaging -- afaik can only be set on a per unit basis rn (though this would be sufficient for your suggestion)

 

[pineappledan]

Scouts are already pretty terrible pillagers. They use half their entire move pool to pillage, so they are sitting ducks afterwards. The ZOC can help them get into important tiles like citadels, which sometimes makes them useful as suicide bombers to take out strategic tile defenses.

 

[Tekamthi]

Scouts are already pretty terrible pillagers. They use half their entire move pool to pillage, so they are sitting ducks afterwards. The ZOC can help them get into important tiles like citadels, which sometimes makes them useful as suicide bombers to take out strategic tile defenses.

Out-of-the-box, sure, but a survivalism 3 (no cost pillaging) & scouting 3 (+1 move) scout is a fantastic pillager -- if you get one with TB2 (ZoC) as well its nigh unstoppable (for AI at least). Add TB3 and some nearby mountains/roads and it won't even get damaged most of the time. imo maybe the zero cost pillaging should go, then its not AS abuseable (though not as much fun either)

 

[azum4roll]

Out-of-the-box, sure, but a survivalism 3 (no cost pillaging) & scouting 3 (+1 move) scout is a fantastic pillager -- if you get one with TB2 (ZoC) as well its nigh unstoppable (for AI at least). Add TB3 and some nearby mountains/roads and it won't even get damaged most of the time. imo maybe the zero cost pillaging should go, then its not AS abuseable (though not as much fun either)

But you only get it on one recon unit ever. There aren't usually enough tiles for you to get 2 Scouting 3 + Survivalism 3 + Trailblazer 2 units.

 

[Tekamthi]

But you only get it on one recon unit ever. There aren't usually enough tiles for you to get 2 Scouting 3 + Survivalism 3 + Trailblazer 2 units.

true, but its still there in almost every game, maybe every other game I manage to get one of these, every third game at the least (granted, I tend to play the larger maps)... and AI can neither stop them effectively nor acquire their own

on jarcast's extra huge map mod i'm gonna get like 4-5 of these, maybe more

 

[Rosete]

Scouts are intentionally weak to everything, their only use being exploration. However, if you baby your pathfinder from turn1, you're rewarded with a singular super scout that can stand on the field. And even then, 1 hit from a melee unit, 1-2 shots from a ranged unit, and your super scout has to retreat. I see the super scout as just reward for managing your unit well.

If you can baby your units, you ought to be rewarded with a strong unit.

 

[pineappledan]

I do agree that the no movement cost to pillage is maybe too situationally mold-breaking. Scouts’ other various abilities focus on sustain and traversal, but free pillage doesn’t fit that paradigm.

We Could replace the no movement cost to pillage with the new +10 extra heal from pillage.

Re: vision, this is what I came up with:
- Trailblazer line replaced by Scouting line as stem
- All Scout line units start with unobstructed Recon vision of 2 radius (can see through forests and hills etc)
- Scouting line bonuses:

- Scouting I: +1 Unobstructed vision radius, ZOC​

- Scouting II: +1 Unobstructed vision radius, +1 normal vision​

- Scouting III: +1 Move. Can use enemy roads​

- Trailblazer:

unlocked by Scouting II or Survivalism II.​

Can enter mountains and embark.​

+20% CS outside friendly land.​

- Commando:

requires Railroad tech.​

unlocked by Scouting I or Survivalism I.​

No movement to pillage.​

Retreats from first melee combat every turn.​

- Survivalism: no movement to pillage removed
- Commando unit:

renamed to Ranger.​

Loses commando promotion (retains its 25% on attack bonus)​

- Frogman:

moved back to unlock at Flight.​

Promotion requirement relaxed to Scouting or Survivalism tier I (currently requires tier III)​

- Special Forces

lose amphibious (mostly redundant with frogman, not consistently useful).​

Gain ranged attack before melee attack (like Impi and GDR)​

 

[Tekamthi]

+1 Unobstructed vision radius, +1 vision

Are these existing, distinct features in the promo tables? I am familiar with the general +/- vision field, but not the radius part

I like this suggestion, but I also think we could revisit your previously passed congress proposal, or aspects of it (full disclosure I voted against it at the time, but it has some interesting parts for sure; possibly a merger of your proposal above and that congress proposal is in order). As I understand it, the prev congress proposal could not be implemented on the basis that the "ignore movement cost from x terrain/feature" does not exist in this selective ignore format, and was too complicated to adapt in the dll -- I've been testing recently and we can accomplish almost the same effect just using double promos -- only differences are a forest/jungle/desert/snow hill will cost 1.5 moves instead of intended 1, and flood plains/oasis become the recon unit's fastest tiles, costing only 0.5 each.

I think there is some misconception that double move promos will stack (ie hills double + desert double = quadruple move speed in desert hill), however this is not the case in recent testing. And without ignore terrain cost, the recon line's movement becomes much more reasonable. Anyway I'm a bit of a broken record on this point now, but you don't have to take my word for it, I have working alternative to ignore promo in the Recon Pay Terrain Cost thread -- I encourage everyone thinking about recon fixes to give it a look, if only for a few turns.

 

[pineappledan]

As I understand it, the prev congress proposal could not be implemented on the basis that the "ignore movement cost from x terrain/feature" does not exist in this selective ignore format, and was too complicated to adapt in the dll

Yes, ignore cost was not implementable, or at least not very easily.
This new proposal would keep ignoring all terrain costs as a baseline ability for all scout units. I think that's better anyways. ignoring all terrain costs makes scouts behave more differently than other unit lines and is more unique than increasing their base movement to 3 and then giving them back their old ignore terrain ability piecemeal.

I've been testing recently and we can accomplish almost the same effect just using double promos -- only differences are a forest/jungle/desert/snow hill will cost 1.5 moves instead of intended 1, and flood plains/oasis become the recon unit's fastest tiles, costing only 0.5 each.

You might look at change movement cost tables which are used to add movement cost in rough terrain to chariot units.
If this table can handle negative values then you could use that to make forest cost 1 less move to enter, etc. I think using flat reductions gets you closer to the effect you want then halving move costs

Are these existing, distinct features in the promo tables? I am familiar with the general +/- vision field, but not the radius part

This would be new code, but it's not that different from the existing Recon ability in the unit table.
'Recon' is a boolean ability that gives unobstructed vision in a 6 tile radius from the unit, and is given to the fighter plane line. You can give it to units that move around too, in which case it reveals a full circle of tiles around that unit at the start of the turn. See my Zeppelin line units for an example. There are promotions that can modify it, decreasing/increasing the radius by X amount, but they don't work very well, and to my knowledge they don't stack.

The point of this little exercise of mine was to try to re-center the stem promotion line onto vision. Buffing movement abilities in various ways just makes scout units more similar to skirmishers, who have high raw movement innately. If people are so upset by the current movement paradigm that combines double moves with ignore moves, then simply giving them slightly different movement options doesn't seem like a real response to the complaint.

 

[pineappledan]

Replace Trailblazer I with Scout I, +1 movement
Replace Trailblazer II with Scout II,+1 sight
Replace Trailblazer III with Scout III,+1 sight, can enter Mountains, can embark.
Delete the old Scout I~III promotion.
New promotion: Commondo, ignore ZOC, Can use enemy road,railroad,+1 movement. Both Scout III and Survivalism III can lead to this promotion.

With this combination, you go scout III and commando for +2 moves, ZOC, and +2 vision.
in comparison to the current setup, the double moves are lost, but you gain +2 vision and +2 movement with 100XP, whereas with the old TBII to Scouting III path you needed 150XP just to get +1 moves and +2 vision, and you didn't get the first +1 vision until 60XP.
@myclan's version would give +1 move and +1 vision after only 30XP, which would catapult your initial scout's XP gain much faster than the double moves

Moving the ZOC back is a complete non-starter to me. I will die on this hill.
The goal should be to make Scout line units behave in ways that are unique to them and offer specific uses, and the line's early and easy access to ZOC does precisely that. moving it all the way back to a tier 4 promo removes the Scout line's utility as suicide bombers that take out essential infrastructure, like knocking out a citadel to break a stalemate. If anything the ZOC should be moved FORWARD; it's only in combination with the 4+ movement from double moves through rough terrain that is making the ZOC so noticeable. If you remove the double movement then there is no reason to go after the ZOC as well.
If you move the ZOC unlock back any further you explode its reliability. It requires too much XP to unlock from just XP buildings, making it the exclusive domain of your 1 'super-scout', because it is way too hard to get recon units levelled up via combat.

the mountain crossing and embarkation without needing sailing are both gimmick picks. They belong on a leaf promotion, not on a stem line.

 

[Tekamthi]

You might look at change movement cost tables which are used to add movement cost in rough terrain to chariot units.
If this table can handle negative values then you could use that to make forest cost 1 less move to enter, etc. I think using flat reductions gets you closer to the effect you want then halving move costs

aye, have experimented with each field in these tables, it appears to be all booleans. (call me 99% certain) eg. in SQL if I set any of the relevant fields to anything but 0 or 1 or true or false, the command fails. Re: my only remaining uncertainty here: I haven't tried to force any other integer values specifically in XML -- but this seems unlikely to work, they all appear as "true/false" in database files.

For reference, in the terrain/feature promo tables, there is a 'DoubleMove' that can be turned either on or off, and 'ExtraMove' which can be turned on or off; if both are turned on, movement cost for the tile is halved AND THEN an extra move is added -- I tried to fix flood plains/oasis this way, but it results in a 1.5 move cost in flood plain, vs only 1 in other flat featureless desert -- thematically it seemed preferable to have them lower. Oasis is a bit odd as a fast tile but there are so few of them so w/e. The chariot rough terrain promo just has the 'ExtraMove' set as true.

Unlike the others, HillsDoubleMove is a flag in the promotions table itself, also a boolean. I am not sure if the terrain/feature tables can be used as an alternative for hills, haven't tried, but since those table fields appear to just be booleans as well it probably doesn't matter. This HillsDoubleMove does not stack on top of any others, nor do any of the other double moves for that matter: unit has double move in the plot or it doesn't, no matter how many redundant doubles it has in its promotions.

It would be a nice modding feature to have, to be able to set 'ExtraMove' to any integer, and have it add/subtract instead of always add 1 move, but for this we are looking at new code.

Moving the ZOC back is a complete non-starter to me.

I agree, its an important and thematically appropriate ability for recon.

In the paradigm of making adjustments that also include nerfs to some abilities (ie the deletion of free pillaging), the enemy roads/railroads seems like one we could possibly move up as offset, even give for free to the line maybe. Thematically it always struck me as odd to imagine that only highly-experienced units are able to figure out how to use roads in foreign lands.

 

[pineappledan]

aye, have experimented with each field in these tables, it appears to be all booleans. (call me 99% certain) eg. in SQL if I set any of the relevant fields to anything but 0 or 1 or true or false, the command fails. Re: my only remaining uncertainty here: I haven't tried to force any other integer values specifically in XML -- but this seems unlikely to work, they all appear as "true/false" in database files.

For reference, in the terrain/feature promo tables, there is a 'DoubleMove' that can be turned either on or off, and 'ExtraMove' which can be turned on or off; if both are turned on, movement cost for the tile is halved AND THEN an extra move is added -- I tried to fix flood plains/oasis this way, but it results in a 1.5 move cost in flood plain, vs only 1 in other flat featureless desert -- thematically it seemed preferable to have them lower. Oasis is a bit odd as a fast tile but there are so few of them so w/e. The chariot rough terrain promo just has the 'ExtraMove' set as true.

Unlike the others, HillsDoubleMove is a flag in the promotions table itself, also a boolean. I am not sure if the terrain/feature tables can be used as an alternative for hills, haven't tried, but since those table fields appear to just be booleans as well it probably doesn't matter. This HillsDoubleMove does not stack on top of any others, nor do any of the other double moves for that matter: unit has double move in the plot or it doesn't, no matter how many redundant doubles it has in its promotions.

It would be a nice modding feature to have, to be able to set 'ExtraMove' to any integer, and have it add/subtract instead of always add 1 move, but for this we are looking at new code.

It's just as well. Innately ignoring terrain movement costs makes scouts move uniquely. Trying to change the ignore terrain creates a problem far worse than anything you're trying to solve; it just turns them into crappy melee units.

A real solution is not going to be found by making scout line units worse at baseline and then giving them their old abilities back bit by bit. They are already considered a nearly-useless unit outside of the first 1-2. They need real, out-of-the-box utility that makes the 10th scout you build capable of contributing in some tactical capacity.

 

[Tekamthi]

It's just as well. Innately ignoring terrain movement costs makes scouts move uniquely. Trying to change the ignore terrain creates a problem far worse than anything you're trying to solve; it just turns them into crappy melee units.

the difference between ignore and double is really not that much -- recall that *most* tiles are either 1 or 2 move cost: a double move in a 2-move plot is functionally identical to ignore in that same plot. the 3-move cost plots do impart some material differences to some units, but consider a 2-move unit that doubles into a 3 cost plot, spending 1.5 moves to get there, vs the ignore unit that only spends 1 move to do the same: each is only moving 2 of these plots regardless.

I interpret what you're saying here as being the ignore + double bonuses, not just ignore on its own, make the recon unique -- and I agree, but therein lies the jarring aspect of forested hill and desert highways some complain of here.