(2-NS) Remove the healing from picking promotions

[BaldSamson]

Goal:
Remove magical healing from the game as much as possible. It's another primary mechanic that I believe enhances human play over AI play.

Details:
Remove the healing from picking promotions, however possible.

Considerations:

• I'm not sure how easy this is to change or if it's something fundamental in the code. I've wanted to test this change myself, but haven't figured out how.
• Besieged cities were changed recently to create units with reduced health, but with enough +XP floating around, you are still able to build fully healed or nearly fully healed units, which works against the intention of that change.
• Many times, the difference between choosing to push forward or retreat will come down to picking some promotion, getting that small boost in health and winning a fight you would have otherwise had to retreat from. I assume the AI also is capable of this tactic and uses it, but my experience is that I rarely recognize it happening (perhaps it is)

 

[pineappledan]

this was one of the things I liked the most when first switching over from vanilla to VP. I would hate to see it go.

 

[Stalker0]

It would make the buying emergency units in a sieged city a lot weaker (which would give city attackers an advantage). Right now a bought unit has %damage = %damage the city has taken, but the healing from your initial promotions mitigates a lot of that. Without that, you couldn't replace garrisons with purchased troops, they would just die pretty quickly.

Ultimately this change would be a benefit to defenders over attackers in the open field. Its attackers that gain the most benefit from a quick flush of healing, ESPECIALLY naval units which often can't heal out in the enemy waters. This would just make attacking weaker, and right now it seems the problem is defense is too strong.

 

[BaldSamson]

It would make the buying emergency units in a sieged city a lot weaker (which would give city attackers an advantage). Right now a bought unit has %damage = %damage the city has taken, but the healing from your initial promotions mitigates a lot of that. Without that, you couldn't replace garrisons with purchased troops, they would just die pretty quickly.

Yes, this is the intention of the change. You shouldn't be able to buy you way out of a siege. If those units come from a nearby unsieged city, great.

Ultimately this change would be a benefit to defenders over attackers in the open field. Its attackers that gain the most benefit from a quick flush of healing, ESPECIALLY naval units which often can't heal out in the enemy waters. This would just make attacking weaker, and right now it seems the problem is defense is too strong.

I'm not sure that you can conclude this benefits defenders more than attackers that easily, but I'd have to think about it a bit more. Regardless, that is minor knock-on effect to fixing a major issue with siege defense and minimizing another "gamey" mechanic.

 

[BaldSamson]

this was one of the things I liked the most when first switching over from vanilla to VP. I would hate to see it go.

Fair enough, everyone has different tastes. We are all playing a game that was released over 10 years ago and has had 1000s of changes to this point. I don't expect people to reach the same conclusions with all these variations/minutiae and fully expect some proposals to fail. I'd be happy if someone that knows how to turn it off could point me in the right direction, as I'll likely always maintain my own balance layer.

 

[Stalker0]

Regardless, that is minor knock-on effect to fixing a major issue with siege defense and minimizing another "gamey" mechanic.

So it seems like what you are "really" going for here is to reduce the gaminess of instant garrisons, which I can get behind. So lets be a bit more scalpel here.

What if we could just say, that when a unit is bought in a sieged city it both:

• Loses X amount of health (based on the damage to the city)
• Gains a plague effect where it can't heal for 1 turn.

That would solve the direct issue, which is being able to replace a dead garrison with a fresh new one and let the city hold out much longer than it "should".

Another perfectly acceptable to option to me, is you simply cannot purchase units from a city that has taken damage. but if that's too extreme, the option above covers it.

 

[BaldSamson]

So it seems like what you are "really" going for here is to reduce the gaminess of instant garrisons, which I can get behind. So lets be a bit more scalpel here.

What if we could just say, that when a unit is bought in a sieged city it both:

• Loses X amount of health (based on the damage to the city)
• Gains a plague effect where it can't heal for 1 turn.

That would solve the direct issue, which is being able to replace a dead garrison with a fresh new one and let the city hold out much longer than it "should".

Sounds reasonable at first glance, but I wonder if you can just wait out the 1 turn without picking the promotions and still get the healing. It could lead to trying to balance X turns without healing and have unintended consequences (like when a siege has recently ended, your units still don't heal for 1 turn?)

Another perfectly acceptable to option to me, is you simply cannot purchase units from a city that has taken damage. but if that's too extreme, the option above covers it.

I don't know if it was difficult to implement, but since the "loses X amount of health" based on city damage was recently implemented, I'd be hesitant to throw it out. I'm happy to add this as an alternative option in the vote though.

 

[Stalker0]

Sounds reasonable at first glance, but I wonder if you can just wait out the 1 turn without picking the promotions and still get the healing. It could lead to trying to balance X turns without healing and have unintended consequences (like when a siege has recently ended, your units still don't heal for 1 turn?)

Unless your playing with promotion saving on (which is a non-standard option, and we generally don't balance around those options), you would have to choose your promotions before the healing malus wore off.

Another version of this, is that the units bought in a siege city also recieve an XP penalty that scales with the city damage taken. So this is a light version of what we have described. This would further reduce the amount of promotions the bought unit gets, and therefore the healing it recieves.

So a softer version of what is noted above, but one that might be easier to code. Bought units already have an XP malus anyway, so we just add on more for the city damage.

 

[CppMaster]

Unless your playing with promotion saving on (which is a non-standard option, and we generally don't balance around those options), you would have to choose your promotions before the healing malus wore off.

Is that really the case? I know that there is an option for policy saving, but promotion saving? I play on default settings and I wasn't forced to pick a promotion before ending a turn. Also, you cannot promote a unit if i doesn't have any movement left, which is weird.

 

[Rekk]

You cannot choose to save choosing a promotion until next turn unless you have selected the option. If you can, it's a bug.

Also, you cannot promote a unit if i doesn't have any movement left, which is weird.

Specifically, you can't promote a unit if it doesn't have any attacks left. This stops you from using promotions to immediately heal after you attack, among other things.

We could  make it so that you can't promote a unit if it doesn't have any move left. This would prevent most purchased units from being able to gain CS/heal on the turn they are purchased. It does go against flavor, though

 

[CppMaster]

Specifically, you can't promote a unit if it doesn't have any attacks left. This stops you from using promotions to immediately heal after you attack, among other things.

So even without the option I can still postpone choosing a promotion if I just attack with the unit, correct?

 

[Rekk]

So even without the option I can still postpone choosing a promotion if I just attack with the unit, correct?

No; once you are allowed to take a promotion, you cannot end the turn without picking one.
If you attack without choosing the promotion, you have chosen to forgo the benefit of that promotion when attacking.

 

[CppMaster]

If you attack without choosing the promotion, you have chosen to forgo the benefit of that promotion when attacking.

Yeah, when attacking, but I can still promote the unit next turn, no?

 

[Rekk]

No; once you are allowed to take a promotion, you cannot end the turn without picking one.

You are allowed to take a promotion at the beginning of the turn, or if you can make multiple attacks, after you make your first one.

 

[CppMaster]

You are allowed to take a promotion at the beginning of the turn, or if you can make multiple attacks, after you make your first one.

Yeah, but when I don't and use all attacks instead then I can postpone it as many turns as I want by keeping attacking. Using all moves also works, I think. The downsides are that I would get benefits from the promotion later and I can't gain more XP, but it's possible.

 

[Rekk]

Yeah, but when I don't and use all attacks instead then I can postpone it as many turns as I want by keeping attacking. Using all moves also works, I think. The downsides are that I would get benefits from the promotion later and I can't gain more XP, but it's possible.

If you can, it is a bug.

 

[Tekamthi]

Keep in mind that vanilla had a promo option that allowed you to heal your unit foregoing the upgrade-style promotion altogether. This was overused by AI; the lesser-healing we have now spread across all promos is the compromise the community arrived at.

VP's vision, as I understood it earlier-on, was to improve upon vanilla features, not necessarily upend them completely, or delete them from the game without alternative. Over time, we can find many counter-examples, but its still worth careful consideration before eliminating what was a feature adjusted from vanilla.

It is a little unexpected when a unit heals from promos, sometimes multiple at once on the frontline, saving them from destruction, but imo this adds to the dynamic feel of civ combat. Anecdotally, it appears to me that this benefits the AI more than human playstyles, as the former tend to churn through more lower level units than human players do, upgrading through these lower levels more frequently than humans are able to XP through the high levels. I'd prefer to keep symmetrically-applied features that benefit the AI playstyle, personally.

 

[Recursive]

Proposal failed due to lack of sponsorship.