(7-39) Authority Discipline Change

[pineappledan]

Current Discipline bonus:
+2 1 to Barracks
-15% unit maintenance and -50% route maintenance
Stacked in a line of Dominance => Discipline => Honor

Proposed bonus:
+2 1 if city has at least 10 Strength
-15% unit maintenance and -50% route maintenance
Change order to Discipline => Dominance => Honor


Rationale
The current bonus is a building bonus, and that is not thematic for Authority. Almost all of Authority's bonuses can be augmented some way via units or unit actions.
The old Garrison bonus was removed because people felt it was too limiting, and forced players not to move their garrisons
This bonus allows you to get it faster if you garrison units, starting with Spearmen, but if you build Walls in the city the threshold city CS is reached and the bonus is permanent, freeing up your garrison to move anywhere.
With God of War and its own base yield, Barracks are a bit overstacked for potential yields already.

Discipline's early 21 bonus creates more tension with the left side Tribute/Imperium side. One gives bonuses for settling while this new ability provides the needed culture and happiness to allow you to expand
If buried behind 2 policies, the added flexibility of this bonus is wasted. Need to move forward to help with timing. Meanwhile dominance's yields and heal on kill (or production scaler) are evergreen bonuses that aren't particularly geared to early game.

Benefits:
Moves the bonus from Barracks to Walls, but with the added flexibility of triggering the bonus early with a garrison
Provides tech flexibility, and settling incentives that are more interactive than a simple barracks boost. You can combine the bonus with settling on hills to trigger it with your warriors, or combine the bonus with Bronze Working/spearmen, or just treat it the exact same as the current building bonus, but moved to construction. It is less limiting for your early game tech progression than being shackled to Military training as a required tech.
Moves away from building bonuses, the most common bonus, and something that is covered extensively by Tradition. This is more thematically coherent for Authority, which gives bonus for unit actions. Combines the thematic strength of the old garrison bonus with the "set and forget" braindead quality of a building bonus. win-win!

The math:
Base city on flat land: 5
Hills bonus: +2
Garrison with warrior: +4
Garrison with Spears: +6
Walls +6

Complex Proposal: DLL + Database Changes needed, pineappledan will assist with database changes

 

[rkkn]

I like this.
Instead of building a barracks as my first building in a new city, I'd station a unit there. Maybe bring an extra one along with the settler for the purpose of staying as a garrison until it's ready. Very thematic and solves the previous problems.
Indeed it is kinda dumb that a newly settled frontier town is expected to build a military training ground as its first building instead of a town square (monument) or a granary. Indeed a new village would have its military units brought in from more established cities.

Somewhat important question: How much CS does an archer garrison give?

 

[pineappledan]

Rule of thumb is divide any unit CS by 2. That is their garrison CS bonus

 

[Stalker0]

I think this proposal solves the one gap created by the barracks change without impacting what that change was for. In other worlds, it's the best of both worlds.

Short term, you can still use garrisons to get the bonus while you get your walls online. Long term, once you have walls, you can still send your soldiers out to fight without having to worry about maintaining the bonus, allowing the aggression that is Authority's whole playstyle.

Seems a very reasonable change to me. The only reservation will be if walls just become too onerous in the build order (especially if we do nerf Authority hammer's as several proposals have desired), so we are back to relying on garrisons for all of the early warring. I think that's something worth trying it out in implementation though, the concept here is sound.

 

[rkkn]

Rule of thumb is divide any unit CS by 2. That is their garrison CS bonus

archer's RCS is 9. does this become 4 or 5? if 5 it works. if 4 it doesn't

 

[Stalker0]

archer's RCS is 9. does this become 4 or 5? if 5 it works. if 4 it doesn't

I believe its CS not RCS

 

[rkkn]

ok I just tested. It's RCS if RCS is higher (+22 for gatling gun. 44 RCS. but uses CS for skirmisher line cuz they have low RCS)
and it rounds down. so archer gives +4. leaving a fresh city on flatland at 9, not enough to get the bonus

 

[pineappledan]

Rule of thumb #2: Everything in the game rounds down.

 

[azum4roll]

How does this interact with the other Authority proposal?

 

[pineappledan]

How does this interact with the other Authority proposal?

There is another “wholesome scaler” proposal which wants to change dominance

Current dominance:
100% science on kills
15 hp on melee kills

Wholesome dominance:
+1 prod to all cities for every 10 units on empire
15 hp on melee kills

This proposal only wants to move dominance back, but not change the policy effects.
If moved back to 3rd policy, I think that unit scaler will be more visibly impactful when it unlocks, since you could be at 20 units by then. Moving the scaling production to unlock later, and moving the flat bonus on discipline sooner should help the unit scaler feel slightly less like a nerf.

 

[pineappledan]

Sponsor note:
This proposal requires the addition of the following new abilities:

Yields in city if city strength is above a specified threshold (probably new policy table)​

Happiness in city if strength is above a specified threshold (probably a new column in Policies table)​

the rest is SQL and text work that I would be able to assist with

 

[axatin]

I sponsor this.

 

[Recursive]

Timestamp post to arrange all the threads in a neat order.