What to do with camels and elephants?

[Steph]

I'm stuck in a hotel room for 10 days with not much to do in the evenings.

So I'll take opportunity to move my mod forward again, after it has been stalled for month due to other projects.*

So, I'm working on the new way to manage the units, mostly through auto production of units.
To sum up, I have now several lines of units
- Spearman I, II and III
- Sordsman I, II and III
- Range unit I, II and III
- Cavalry I, II and III.

When for a civ there is enough variety , I use the whole range. If not I just make copies.
Ex for Scandinavia :
For era 6 (vikings)
- Swodsman I = viking swordsman,
- Swodsman II = viking axeman
- Swodsman III = viking berserker

For era 7
- Swodsman I = scandiavian swordsman,
- Swodsman II = scandiavian swordsman
- Swodsman III = scandiavian axeman

ie: the viking axeman and swordsman both upgrade to the scanddinavian swordsman, ecept they are actually two identical copies (allowing me to split again later into different units if I want).

With a chain of upgrade, I can have the whole list of flavoured units with only 12 buildings. And by using some as impovment, some as small wonder, I can be sure to have lots of spearmen and few foot knights.


Now, for cavalry, I want to use "horse in the city radius" to limit the number of improvment I have. The 3 lines are usually Horseman I = light cavalry/horseman, Horseman II = range cavalry, Horseman III = heavy cavalry, with of course exceptions depending on eras / civilizations.

But I have a problem for Arabia, and a few other civ, which could have camels or elephants at some points (but not everytime).

I have to still give them real horsemen for some eras, so I need to keep the improvement requring horse.

But when I have let say one horse, and two camel units available, what should I do?

Let the civ generate camels for Horseman II and III? OR make it bujilt the horse unit as Horseman I, II and III (3 copies) and have additional camel units,with their own building to autoproduce them (requiring camel of coruse)?

Or another idea?

 

[Moosezilla]

Own building(s) W/requirement(s) sounds best to me.

 

[Steph]

It means the Arabs will have more units (regular cavaly will still be there to avoid breaking the cain) + some extra camels.

So a bigger army than the others. But I can make their cav weaker.
I need to rebalance a little everything. Since some units, like the knights are produced via a small wonder, I can make them quite stronger than the horsemen without worries that the AI would built them and only them.

 

[JSnider]

Both sounds best to me .. can also have it take longer to autP a camel unit then the horse unit, thus fewer of them over time then horses.

 

[Steph]

Yes, autoproduction is nice to control this kind of things.

But this new method really make the number if units explode

I currently have 1726 units, and I have done era 1 to 8 only, and I still want to add a few more civs. And only infantry has been expanded for auto production, cavalry is not done yet.

However, in game it should remain manageable since the expanded game mechanism will limit the actual units available in the civpedia a lot.

 

[Bengal Tiger]

You could stick in a camel/elephant unit in between the unit chain. That way, if the neccessary resources are available, the civ can build elephants/camels, if not, they build the horsemen at the next level down. They would both eventually upgrade to the same unit, so even if the resources aren't available, the chain remains unbroken.

 

[Steph]

yes, but the would get a "cavalry recruit" if they have horses, and instead of upgrading it to a horseman unit they make a camel if they have camel...
Strange...
And worse, if they don't have horse but only camel, then the autoproducing building will not be available and they won't produce anything --> doesn't work

 

[Moosezilla]

I had always assumed that Earth or a portion thereof (w/placed start locations) as part of Steph's History/Evolutive. As well resources would be allocated as in a real world (not saying it would cease to be a game). If so Eurasia and Africa have horses while the other parts (of Earth) must wait. In the past you have mentioned partial Earth map to start. I imagine moving past the 8th era will be mammoth.

 

[Steph]

I don't have a real world map, because I like exploring the world. The drawback is the fact Arabia could start in Siberia and Russia in the desert

 

[Cimbri]

How many movement point do your units have?

Could camels be included in the chain of infantry? Many ancient armies used camels to transport their infantry.


Elephants could be used as replacement for some sort of heavy infantry. I recall that the Indian Guptas began using heavy cavalry after seeing how Indo-Scythian heavy cavalry was more useful than elephants.

 

[Steph]

it's not a question of what to replace, but of resource availability

Camel and Elephants are produced via an improvment which requires the corresponding resource in the city radius, so you cannit built them en masse.

It somehow force me to make a unique unit line for them.

 

[JSnider]

Another option might .. again might if recall correctly, always not sure about this as been a tad since played with editors .. be to obsolete the buildings based on future developments. Thus only produce given unit for a set period of time and then as future mil tech comes on go on to something else. Only issue here then would be the cost to build the edifice, might have to make it cheap so doesn't take say 30 turns to build and the new tech comes in say 20 turns .. would opt for say ~2-3 turns to build.

 

[Steph]

actually, I will use some obsolete building (and even more, complete removal of the building when moving forward in era), for a few of them. Like for elephants.

 

[Quinzy]

You could always try a "pack animal" resource that does for horses, camels, elephants, and all inbetween.

 

[The Guardian]

If I understand correctly, you are going to have random placement of starting locations and fixed placement of resources? If that is true, how are you going to control which civs have access to which resources? As you mentioned earlier, arabs may start in Siberia and Vikings may start in the Sahara. So, vikings may end up with camels and arabs may end up being able to build who knows what. I would recommend a fixed map and fixed starting location as a more controllable approach.

 

[Steph]

Horses ansd iron will be strategic resources, and so relatively even placed. Camel will be less frequent as limited to desert.

So they will be more a bonus available to Arabia if they start near a desert.

I would recommend a fixed map and fixed starting location as a more controllable approach.

Perhaps you missed the part where I said I like exploraring new maps?

So I want a mod that can work relatively well with random maps.

However, once this is done, I may very well add an optional scenario with a map.

 

[Moosezilla]

I too,enjoy the exploration phase of civ. Perhaps your answer would lay in the old hidden tech trick of "being Arab", "being Indian",etc. As to balance, the units would not be dependent on resource (w/hidden tech), thus could be a replacement for unique units and built by SW. The number produced would allow for your balance concerns.

 

[Steph]

My mod heavily use hidden tech, since I grant a new civ specific tech at each era, to enable "evolutive civ" like Gauls becoming Franks and then French.

So only Arabia can built camel via an auto producing improvment anyway

 

[Balthasar]

Steph, your problem might be resolved if you re-consider the resources you're using to enable units.
Consider this: Arabs use camels because they're better for crossing deserts, so it follows that if Swedes had originated in the desert instead, they might use camels and dress like Arabs.

In other words, since you're using random maps, why not make your unit lines terrain-specific rather than culture-specific? For instance, to build desert units, you might need, at a minimum, Flax (for linen), and Oasis (for camels). To build Viking-style units, however, you might need Sheep (for wool), Northern Forest (for fur and lumber), Iron, and Fjords (for Longboats). Wild Horses prefer to breed in Canyons (mountains), near Long Grasses which is why they originally came from the dry Taurus Mountains, and later proliferated in the American Southwest. Once domesticated, they were bred (auto-produced) in Corrals and Stables, which might require trade with a Civ with access to Grain. A Horse +1 citizen can upgrade to a mounted unit in my Old West Mod which is configured in this manner. It would have to be specified that all cultures be able to build any unit, provided they have the resources within their city limits, at least in early eras.

You might even encourage migration by making the best units in an upgrade line only available to cultures that build cities on terrain that match that culture's "native" terrain. Once a Viking Civ realizes that it can build very powerful units in the north, it will high-tail it out of the desert. Even the AI understands that, I'm fairly sure...

 

[Steph]

An intriguing idea, but I'm really not sure the AI understand one. Don't forget it's limited by the NS of the programmer.

Also, this means that you don't really have such flavour units as I'd like.

But maybe I could use it for a few units.

Like give what I have for horse units (since many flavour are available), but make camel units available to any civ, as a kind of bonus "mercenary" bedouins?