(51) Proposal: Woodsman promotion moved to Shock I

[ma_kuh]

UPDATED: Significantly reduced the scope of this proposal.

Change: Woodsman requires Shock I or Drill II (instead of Shock II or Drill III; still only for spears and swords).

Rationale: Although niche, Amphibious is a useful promotion for dealing with river-heavy starts that would otherwise make it incredibly difficult to defend your own starting territory. Woodsman is also useful for this same situation, but comes too late to make a difference against forest walking barbarians or mounted units; once it does, you often have roads connecting your cities, negating this niche. By moving Woodsman earlier, the barrier to entry is lowered and allows for an often-skipped promotion to have a role in the game.

 

[adan_eslavo]

These new promotions are too easily available. Either they should be moved later (Shock II?) either we will have lots of speed runners on the map. Maybe they should be mutually exclusive?

 

[ma_kuh]

I think I'm being too ambitious with this proposal, really what I wanted was for Woodsman to be available at Shock I so that infantry can navigate forests as quickly as mounted units and provide a definitive home-territory advantage when you get a jungle start. As it stands, trying to pick Woodsman for a forest advantage is way too late to actually use in any initial skirmishes. The mounted promotions are probably too much.

 

[nekokon]

Imo using any promotion for anything not directly lead to important promotion for their jobs is a bad choice, solely because some high level promotions is too valuable to delay.
If there is any need for those terrain centric promotion, it would make more sense to put them into military buildings throughout the era (which is truer historically, as modern military armies get better equipment to handle logistic/combat across different terrains).
Also partly solve the issue of slow moving units clogging the map late game if they're no longer slowed down by rough terrain while still keeping the strategy viable early game when there're much less units (although I think giving more AoE to late game units like bombers or guided missile would be a better solution, but none of the dev seems to be warmonger enthusiast)

 

[ma_kuh]

@Recursive I think I want to simplify and breakup this counter proposal, since it conflicts with the Woodsman change already proposed. Is it okay to gut the OP with the new proposal or would it be better to close this thread and open a fresh one without the baggage?

 

[Recursive]

@Recursive I think I want to simplify and breakup this counter proposal, since it conflicts with the Woodsman change already proposed. Is it okay to gut the OP with the new proposal or would it be better to close this thread and open a fresh one without the baggage?

You can do either, but if you make an amendment be sure to note it in the thread. Please note that if you create a new proposal, your existing one will remain active.

 

[ma_kuh]

I've updated the OP and title with a simpler change to Woodsman:

Change: Woodsman requires Shock I or Drill II (instead of Shock II or Drill III; still only for spears and swords).

Rationale: Although niche, Amphibious is a useful promotion for dealing with river-heavy starts that would otherwise make it incredibly difficult to defend your own starting territory. Woodsman is also useful for this same situation, but comes too late to make a difference against forest walking barbarians or mounted units; once it does, you often have roads connecting your cities, negating this niche. By moving Woodsman earlier, the barrier to entry is lowered and allows for an often-skipped promotion to have a role in the game.

I feel like this change is compatible with the original proposal, but I'll leave it to poll-makers to decide if there should be a third option to accept both.

 

[Recursive]

I'll add an option for both changes.

 

[Recursive]

I sponsor this proposal.

Proposal Sponsors: Recursive.

(Sponsors have indicated that they are able and willing to perform the code changes required for this proposal if the community votes Aye on it. Other coders are free to sponsor this as well. A proposal without a sponsor will not advance to the Voting Phase.)