(2-VT) don't inherit illogical upgrades from units

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alchx

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Inspired by Musketman retaining the unique Cho-ku-nu 'Siege Valleys' promotion.
Technically, the Cho-ku-nu used repeating crossbows that allowed for barrage fire. I am not an expert in history, but I have doubts about the ability to conduct barrage fire from early muskets with their muzzle-loading features, poor quality of gunpowder and general unreliability.

It is possible that other civilizations have some kind of illogical inheritance.

Spoiler :
201022034-c6be2ea8-536b-459c-8c99-222503e05298.jpg

 
It' sometimes illogical, but it makes for good gameplay. At least the feared elephant promotion is not carried over to horses.
 
maybe those musketman kept their repeating crossbows as a sidearm, you don't know

back in civ 1 every now and then a spearman could defeat a tank or battleship... these kind illogical combat scenarios are a civ-franchise staple imo, and good fun as others have pointed out
 
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Inspired by Musketman retaining the unique Cho-ku-nu 'Siege Valleys' promotion.
Technically, the Cho-ku-nu used repeating crossbows that allowed for barrage fire. I am not an expert in history, but I have doubts about the ability to conduct barrage fire from early muskets with their muzzle-loading features, poor quality of gunpowder and general unreliability.
The Japanese used specialized tactics to achieve a similar effect of "barrage fire" with matchlock guns so it's not entirely illogical.

As others have mentioned though, it would make the game less fun if we took away what makes the Unique Units... well, Unique.
 
For me, logic doesn't factor into whether I think a promo should be kept. What does bother me is if a high-tier promo is granted (and compensated for) on the UU (for example, lower base CS for Range or Logistics), and then gets kept for un-modified general units. When that's the case, I'd prefer the promo just be explicitly counted as part of their balance, and granted to the unit line (maybe after the UU's era). I'd say this is especially true of military civs whose identity, at least in some capacity, revolves around the uniqueness of their army. For non-military civs, getting a power spike of a unit that doesn't alter the entire line can be fine.

Only getting the promo during a specific period of the game forces too much variance in my opinion between the power level of your army. If you boom units during the right one or two eras, you're "at power" and anything less is suboptimal. You don't really get to choose when to boom army in that case.

Yes there's "counter play" to picking off the veteran units from early eras, but I doubt the AI really makes use of that as a strategic decision, and it's a really boring mini-game trying to keep the "good" units alive; you're already trying to keep everything alive, it doesn't add anything.
 
Inheriting ancient buffs into modern units is not a good idea, although it can be fun.

In vanilla Civ 5, playing through the Authority and getting to the helicopters, the most effective thing was not to produce modern attack helicopters, but to hire landsknechts of the 16th century (being in the 20th) and gradually upgrade them to helicopters. The result was a unit with a movement of 6 tiles, not spending points on robbing a tile. It was enough to throw 1-2 of these helicopters behind enemy lines and it was possible to plunder absolutely the entire territory with impunity, attacking cities in parallel, if the helicopters had a 'double attack' advance.
 
Spoiler :
For me, logic doesn't factor into whether I think a promo should be kept. What does bother me is if a high-tier promo is granted (and compensated for) on the UU (for example, lower base CS for Range or Logistics), and then gets kept for un-modified general units. When that's the case, I'd prefer the promo just be explicitly counted as part of their balance, and granted to the unit line (maybe after the UU's era). I'd say this is especially true of military civs whose identity, at least in some capacity, revolves around the uniqueness of their army. For non-military civs, getting a power spike of a unit that doesn't alter the entire line can be fine.

Only getting the promo during a specific period of the game forces too much variance in my opinion between the power level of your army. If you boom units during the right one or two eras, you're "at power" and anything less is suboptimal. You don't really get to choose when to boom army in that case.

Yes there's "counter play" to picking off the veteran units from early eras, but I doubt the AI really makes use of that as a strategic decision, and it's a really boring mini-game trying to keep the "good" units alive; you're already trying to keep everything alive, it doesn't add anything.
I actually like the idea of giving the Unique ability to a unit line rather than a single unit. Might be too big of a change, though.
 
Then, perhaps it is worth giving civilizations not unique units, but a unique promotion for units, starting from some stage.

For example,

China: starting with crossbowmen, all ranged units get 'Siege Valley'
Russia: All Cossacks and their descendants gain +25% attack against wounded
France: all foot soldiers, starting with musketeers +1 movement (and something else)

This will allow civilizations to extend their 'golden age of development' to the very endgame. Although it will make civilizations very strong that get unique units very early - they should weaken unique advances.
And perhaps the AI will stop spamming endless unique units as soon as they become available, and will make armies more balanced, where there is not only infantry, or only cavalry, or only archers.
 
i think the UU's and their promos are designed the way they are to emphasize power at a certain moment in history, roughly matching when their RL counterparts experienced some military prominence. Its not intended to represent that at some moment these civs learned a fighting technique that forever conferred a combat advantage for the rest of history. The OP and related suggestions would distort the thematic intention of these UU's.

That said, as implemented, there is a great deal of abstraction that renders this effect somewhat unrealistic, but i think most feel that this fits within the paradigm of civ abstractions, as we're seeing thus far in this thread. There is some inconsitency, however, in that some civs can upgrade their UU's and retain their advantage via promos, vs. others that lose their promos on upgrade, and others still that aren't promo'd but just have a stronger base unit. If its "fun" as everyone suggests (myself included) to be able to carry promos forward through upgrades, maybe its worth looking at reworking those that can't do this, so that they can?
 
Currently every UU carries something forward when upgraded.
 
I don't think we should be obsoleting a promotion based on what's in its name text variable.
 
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Proposal vetoed.

Reason:
Not specific enough. What promotions should be removed from what units?
 
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