(8-11) 4UC China: Unique Military Diplomatic Unit

[azum4roll]

Links:

[DLL] - (8-NS) 4UC China

This is a thread for discussing the addition of 2 more unique components to the Chinese civilization.

forums.civfanatics.com

[DLL] - (8-NS) China rework

Base proposal: https://forums.civfanatics.com/threads/8-11-4uc-china.690044/ Current UA: Mandate of Heaven Creating:greatwork:Great Works or gaining cities grants 5 turns of "We love the Empress" day, and a permanent +2:c5food: Food in all Cities. Bonus Yields decline by 50% on era change...

forums.civfanatics.com

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UU2 - Treasure Ship (renamed Baochuan, unique Naval Melee unit class)
Unlocked at Astronomy
Does not obsolete
Requires 1 Paper
50 +150 per era (350 at unlock)
32
4
Can be expended in City-State territory to conduct a Diplomatic Mission
Expedition (+70 Influence, gain untradeable copies of resources owned by the City-State for 50 turns (Standard speed), and Gold based on the distance from your Capital when performing a Diplomatic Mission.)

Details:

• It can gain naval melee promotions, and does not upgrade to anything.
• It is not considered a diplomatic unit, and thus does not benefit from production modifiers from Chancery etc. However, as a naval unit it benefits from the production modifier from Harbor.
• Similarly, it cannot gain the promotions from diplomatic buildings, including the ignore border effect from Summer Palace and Wire Service.
• Its diplomatic mission benefits from Statecraft's scaler influence boost.
• It has the unit AI of diplomatic units (UNITAI_MESSENGER). Some code will need to be changed to account for the unit being non-civilian. It's unknown whether the AI will attack with this unit.
• The Gold amount is the same as selling exotic cargo (max 400, min 100).
• The resource copies can be based at the time of the diplomatic mission or updated when the CS gains or loses copies, depending on which one is easier to implement.
• Its production cost is 50 Production cheaper than diplomatic units.

Rationale:

• The current Baochuan is hard to use for the AI, so it's remade into a unique unit class to make use of an existing unit AI.
• Early Renaissance is a more fitting time historically. The expeditions happened around that period.
• Similar to Nau, this unit can perform an action at City States to gain Gold and resources. However, Treasure Ship is fundamentally a diplomatic unit that can defend itself, while Nau utilizes the action to build Feitoria for better trade routes, and raises its own level. They have different roles and should play very differently.
• The unit not obsoleting means you always have a cheaper diplomatic unit to use (but confined to water), and unlike Diplomat and Ambassador it only costs 1 Paper. The Navigation promotions can make it reach its target faster.
• Even though the UB is a Chancery, there's no conflict with this unit as the Examination Hall doesn't provide any extra diplomatic bonus.
• The name is changed to Treasure Ship instead of Baochuan. Using Pinyin instead of translation for Chinese terms should generally be avoided unless the former is already widely used internationally, because of possible ambiguity.

 

[randomnub]

I agree we should get rid of the kowtow, and if the AI is ok to deal with this nau-like ship it feels good enough as a replacement. I don't like the 'never obsoletes' part due to having a Renaissance model ship lingering around in the endgame.

If the AI isn't able to attack with this unit though, this is a big no.

 

[azum4roll]

If the AI isn't able to attack with this unit though, this is a big no.

You aren't supposed to use it as a military unit, maybe outside of right when it unlocks.

The combat strength is there so
1. it doesn't immediately die to something running into it; and
2. it can pick either Hull or Navigation promotions to help its mission.

 

[randomnub]

If I'm not supposed to use it as a military unit then it should deserve to die to something running into it, and I can't take many promos outside of those guaranteed upon contruction. Dunno, I'd vote yes to any 'standard' UU2 at this point.

 

[pineappledan]

Similar to Nau, this unit can perform an action at City States to gain Gold and resources. However, Treasure Ship is fundamentally a diplomatic unit that can defend itself, while Nau utilizes the action to build Feitoria for better trade routes, and raises its own level. They have different roles and should play very differently

I still don’t understand why it can’t be a unique frigate with a 1-time action that functions like the Nau, but with different rewards? We already have the AI for that so it can’t be an issue there. I would vastly prefer that over adding a new unitclass.

Making them obsolete is better history, imo. The treasure fleets happened over a period of 28 years. under the rule of the Yongle Emperor and then were discontinued by later Ming emperors because of their cost. There was a period of time when China started more actively cultivating a sphere of influence and then they abruptly stopped, so an obsoleting unit makes perfect sense to me.

 

[azum4roll]

We already have the AI for that so it can’t be an issue there.

The thing is, the AI is nowhere close to being good for exotic cargo. The unit needs to be assigned the explore AI to start considering selling cargo at all, and they only sell if they happen to be far away from the capital on auto explore mode. The diplo unit AI is more straight forward and isn't tacked on another AI that wanders around randomly.

Frigates aren't good explorers, and assigning them the explore AI will hinder actual exploration.

What should be the obsolete tech if it does?

 

[hokath]

MAGI:
So we need the base exam hall
Then we need this new mission

+70 Influence, gain untradeable copies of resources owned by the City-State for 50 turns (Standard speed), and Gold based on the distance from your Capital when performing a Diplomatic Mission.

The first and last bit should be database, but the middle bit needs DLL
Furthermore this part

It has the unit AI of diplomatic units (UNITAI_MESSENGER). Some code will need to be changed to account for the unit being non-civilian. It's unknown whether the AI will attack with this unit.

Probably needs new AI code and testing. It's not clear to me how the AI decides to build units like this -- will it make ships to do naval stuff and then when it has them go schizo and make them all do diplomacy missions (losing part of its navy), hopefully not

 

[azum4roll]

It's not clear to me how the AI decides to build units like this -- will it make ships to do naval stuff and then when it has them go schizo and make them all do diplomacy missions (losing part of its navy), hopefully not

They won't consider it a military ship when deciding what to build. I'm not sure about how they pick which diplo unit to build since there's normally only one choice.

It won't be part of a navy for the military AI or tactical AI either. Ideally they should be using them to perform diplo missions only, and try to avoid all combat.

AI doesn't seem to escort diplo units, so no changes needed there.

The AI responsible for picking promotions should prefer either Hull or Navigation promotions for bulk and movement bonuses respectively. I'm not sure how that works either. Could be entirely new logic (which is actually preferable to having to muddle with existing ones) if the picker is based on the current AI of the unit.

 

[azum4roll]

gain untradeable copies of resources owned by the City-State for 50 turns (Standard speed), and Gold based on the distance from your Capital when performing a Diplomatic Mission

This requires new UnitPromotions boolean columns (DiploMissionResourceCopy and DiploMissionScalingGold), triggered when the unit performs a diplomatic mission.
The gold amount can be obtained from CvUnit::getExoticGoodsGoldAmount(), until we change the amount/formula in a later congress.

The resource copies can be based at the time of the diplomatic mission or updated when the CS gains or loses copies, depending on which one is easier to implement.

I think the latter is easier to implement as you never have to store the copied amount (for when you remove it after 50 turns). It would work exactly as if you ally a shadow of that CS for 50 turns.
Maybe there can be a map of (city state ID) and (vector of duration) stored in CvPlayer and checked/updated in CvPlayer:: DoTurn(), doing a resource check for each CS inside the map similar to CvMinorCivAI:: DoUpdateAlliesResourceBonus().

CvUnit::AI_promotionValue() needs to be updated to value non-HP/movement promotions at 0 if the unit AI is UNITAI_MESSENGER.

The exam hall needs this Building column HighestGPPOnBirth

And then there's this.

 

[Recursive]

Proposal sponsored by prior agreement from @azum4roll.

 

[Recursive]

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