(9-WD) Change Authority's bonus on kill to bonus on dealing damage

[paul_soryu]

Proposal:

• Change Authority opener
  • from "Receive Science and Culture when you kill a Unit equal to 50% of its Strength."
  • to "Receive Science and Culture for each point of damage you deal to a Unit, equal to 50% of its Strength devided by its Max HP."
• Change Authority scaler
  • from "Receive Science and Culture when you kill a Unit equal to 10% of its Strength."
  • to "Receive Science and Culture for each point of damage you deal to a Unit, equal to 10% of its Strength devided by its Max HP."

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Motivation:
Authority currently only benefits from kills and not warfare itself, prolonged stalemate, attrition warfare or a defensive war with an equal or superior enemy usually gives fewer yields, which leads to unsuccessful early and mid-game warmongers being left completely in the dust. Authority pickers usually are either at the top of the rating or at the bottom of it. Current bonus is also unfavorable to the AI players as a human player is much better at finishing off units and tactically retreating to heal.

"devided by its Max HP" part makes the total yields gained roughly equal to how much you're gaining now from kills, a little more from units healing which is intended.

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Concerns:
- The tooltip is somewhat wordy, but I didn't find a better way to write it, I'm open to suggestions
- I don't know how difficult it is to implement, but The Huns already have "Gain 1 Gold and Culture for every 2 damage dealt to Cities, scaling with Era."
- I could do "devided by 100" instead of "devided by its Max HP" to make it easier to estimate in your head, but 1) I don't think it is practical to estimate it even now, you just kill units and get what you get, 2) it will inflate the amount of yields gained from units with more than 100 HP (infantry units starting at Swordsmen, ships with Hull promos, Juggernauts, etc.) relative to how long it takes to kill them
- Too many instant yield notifications of this type to the point they could be turned off by default. I don't remember how it works for The Huns but it could be done the same way here

 

[hokath]

While I agree that Authority on-kill yields has several issues, including ones not discussed in OP, I feel like it is quite hard to anticipate how strong this particular change would be.
This would probably need an implementation to test first.
A similar mechanic is the YieldFromCombatExperienceTimes100, which tracks combat events and might achieve the same thing? Japan has this already as a promotion so you can look there for numbers, but would effectively duplicate that effect for Japan, so not ideal.
In my changes I implemented a community idea where you disconnect from combat and give yields from training military units instead -- but I feel this is probably too large of a change for this congress.
Sorry that's a bit of a ramble, it is bed time.

 

[redrum68]

I like the direction but think since the yields will be easier to get and more consistent that the values need lowered.

 

[FPXI]

I really don't' want to lose the little bit of mastery around having to actually kill the unit to get the yields, that kind of texture makes the game feel more interactive. It'd be preferable for the AI to be better at this, obviously, but even without an improvement I think the current situation is okay. Also, there's a problem with just farming barbs.

 

[Stalker0]

MAGI: @paul_soryu What is the desired interaction with melee attacks. If a melee attacker attacks you, and takes damage in response, would this count for the yield benefit?

 

[Stalker0]

The only concern I have is authority players just attacking barbs but not killing them to gain more yields. Now that already happens a bit with barbarian camp farming, but this would be a lot stronger version of that.

 

[azum4roll]

Instant yields round down to the nearest integer. Early game you may not even get a single yield with a ranged attack.

 

[paul_soryu]

Instant yields round down to the nearest integer. Early game you may not even get a single yield with a ranged attack.

Didn't know that, that's definitely a problem. Assuming you deal 10 damage with an attack AND all Authority policies are adopted, all units with less than 10CS will yield nothing (this includes Slinger, Hand-Axe, Brute, Warrior, Archer, Chariot Archer, Pathfinder, Catapult, Trebuchet, Liburna, and all UU replacements). Attacking with a Slinger would probably always give nothing. With only Authority opener it would be 50% worse. Could be solved by making it give at least 1 per attack, which would slightly increase overall gain, but it might introduce some obscure abuses in early game (6 Slingers endlessly attacking one powerful fortified Barb for steady +6 per Turn). On the other hand, rounding down of all "dealt damage instant yields" will decrease overall gain (but it will be somewhat random and inconsistent).

A similar mechanic is the YieldFromCombatExperienceTimes100, which tracks combat events and might achieve the same thing? Japan has this already as a promotion so you can look there for numbers, but would effectively duplicate that effect for Japan, so not ideal.

So attacking with a Melee unit for 5 XP with this promotion gives 7 (1.4 per XP). Attacking a Pikeman (which is unlocked at the same tech as this promo for Japan) for 10 damage with my proposal would give (rounded down) only 1, 20 damage — 3, 40 damage — 6, 50 damage — 8, 100 damage — 17(same as killing now). Longswordsman will give slightly more yields, but it is also more difficult to deal damage to it. Enemy units with March promotion will yield slightly more, but I personally don't encounter them that often. Constant rounding down already slightly decreases overall gain, to the point it might even balance out gains from enemy units healing. In my understanding it won't benefit succesful warmongers that much, since they'll just conquer someone and get roughly the same yields, but it will benefit struggling Authority players.

I really don't' want to lose the little bit of mastery around having to actually kill the unit to get the yields, that kind of texture makes the game feel more interactive. It'd be preferable for the AI to be better at this, obviously, but even without an improvement I think the current situation is okay.

If your goal is to win a war then you need to prioritize killing units either way, it is not like without Authority killing units isn't a priority. I don't like how currently unsuccesful warmongers have no chance at competing with Tradition and Progress, it is all or nothing, unless Authority civ conquers cities it is way behind in development, in mid-late-game it even becomes an easy target for an attack. It wouldn't be a big problem if there wasn't just so many early warmonger civs in the game which always pick Authority and only rarely succeed.

The only concern I have is authority players just attacking barbs but not killing them to gain more yields. Now that already happens a bit with barbarian camp farming, but this would be a lot stronger version of that.

As far as I remember barbs outside of the camp can't heal (they just suicide into your units), but I didn't think about endlessly farming a barb at a Camp. Would it be better than clearing a camp for 25 (scaling with era)? You would need to deal 300 damage to a Brute to get 24 (same as killing 3 Brutes now), 200 damage (or 2 units now) for a Spearman, that's including all the turns waiting for the unit to heal with +10 HP per turn, so at least 20 turns spent only on its healing. In that time you could have already destroyed a newly spawned Camp. Assuming a fortified Brute takes 3 turns to kill, an attacker would recieve 2 more (3 more for Spearman), because attacked unit would be able to heal 30 HP. Overall barb farming would give roughly the same amount of yields, what are the scenarios which would yield significantly more than now? Oh no, I know one, I missed that while a Barb heals in a camp, a camp also spawns new units, so effectively you would be able to kill 2-3 more units if you farmed a Brute for 300 HP, that's a problem.

MAGI: @paul_soryu What is the desired interaction with melee attacks. If a melee attacker attacks you, and takes damage in response, would this count for the yield benefit?

Good question. I would say since currently this interaction contributes to a kill, it should give yields in my proposal too. There's also damage dealt by Citadels and Cities, and excluding all of those would make for a confusing tooltip, so I think it should be all damage that an enemy receives from Authority civ's sources (which is described by "damage dealt", either by attacking, defending or from other sources).

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There's too many early-game problems with this proposal for now, which can't be easily fixed, so unless you have ideas how to fix them, this proposal is withdrawn, thanks everyone for the feedback. Past early game it seems to me that the change is balanced, let me know what you think about my counter-arguments.

 

[Stalker0]

MAGI: Withdrawing proposal per OP's request.

 

[Recursive]

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