About UU & UB

[myclan]

I think it will be more interesting to make UU & UB stronger. An UU may be strong enough to encourage players to search for a war during that era. An UB may be strong enough to speed up the development of an empire just like a short golden age.

I also think that UUs and UBs are really "unique" if they are not just a stronger version of the original unit. For example, Roman can build swordman and legion at the same time, but legion are more powerful with some promotions, while more expensive and the amount is limited at the same time. UW, also, proviede some unique benefit, not just a golden age may be better.

For the traits, I think CIV5 has set a good example. Every leaders may have one trait that only belong to hime, and a second trait which choose from the list. Now we have so many civilizations and leaders. It is really very difficult to design a trait for each of them, but I think less leaders, more diversity may be more interesting than more leaders, but similar to each other.

 

[Absolution]

I totally agree with the idea.
I have always thought that more radical UU&B can make every leader play in a different strategy.
Another thing is that I don't think that UU should replace any regular unit.
They should be only a bonus, not a replacement.

About the traits, I think that more radical traits will do the job.
So that leaders like Genghis Khan, for example, will actually invest in a large and offensive mounted army as their strategy.

 

[Xyth]

UUs

UUs in HR are already stronger on average than in BTS. There's actually not a huge amount of leeway before a UU gets so strong it's nearly unstoppable. While only being allowed to build a certain number of your UU would provide more scope, it would also be extremely challenging to balance on quite a few levels. For example, unit limits aren't too much of a restriction when you're only fighting a war on one front.

Part of the reason 1.20 took so long to finish was that UU balancing was a drastically more challenging task than I ever anticipated. 104 UUs is a lot and I strived to ensure no UUs of the same type had similar stats. A lot harder than it sounds, trust me. There's undoubtably tweaks and changes that need making still but I think 1.20's array of UUs is a very good base to work with. Over time I'd like to add more custom abilities like the Corsair, Flamethrower, and a few others have.

As for UUs being additional, rather than replacing a unit type - the main impediment is availability of art. As always, plenty for some civs, next to nothing for others. Also, there's only so many roles that units can play so the UU will other render another unit pointless anyway. For example, there's little point in building Swordsmen if Legionaries can do their job much better. Even if the Legionary is redesigned to not clash with the Swordsman it will almost certainly clash with some other unit. I'm sure we could find a few niches where the UU for a civ could stand out and be truly unique, but there's no way we could do it for 104 of them! Combat in BTS just isn't complex enough.

I'm not opposed to the idea, but ultimately I suspect it would be an awful lot of work for little gain and a host of balance problems.


UBs

UBs definitely need to be reviewed and strengthened. Most are fairly uninspiring. Not in 1.21 though, I need a break from such extensive review/rebalance tasks


UWs

Giving UWs some unique bonuses is certainly something to consider for the future. However, because they all unlock at considerably different points in the tech tree, I think Unique Abilities a la Civ5 would probably work better. Frees us up to come up with interesting ideas and not have to worry about this civ having theirs near game start and that civ not getting theirs till much later.

Note that I definitely would not attach Unique Abilities to leaders - I much prefer the trait combo system and I have no desire at all to reduce the number of leaders HR has. 1 leader per civ is one of the things I dislike most about Civ5. If I did add Unique Abilities I'd attach them to the civ itself, in addition to leader traits.

This isn't a high priority though, a lot of other things I'd prefer to add first.


Traits

Though we can get much more creative with traits than we can with civics, the restriction (as always) is the AI. When it comes to custom coded traits we can only augment what an AI player is likely to do anyway, we cannot make the AI play differently because it has a certain trait. Unique Abilities would also suffer this limitation.

 

[myclan]

My idea is that an UU can be nearly as same as the original, just stronger, like 6 str for swordsman and 8 str for legion, they play the same role, but the number of legion is limited to 5, so you still need to build swordsman if you want a large army.
About UW, I think it is enough to attach a weak UA like the current UB does, just not only an extra golden age.

 

[Absolution]

UUs

UUs in HR are already stronger on average than in BTS. There's actually not a huge amount of leeway before a UU gets so strong it's nearly unstoppable. While only being allowed to build a certain number of your UU would provide more scope, it would also be extremely challenging to balance on quite a few levels. For example, unit limits aren't too much of a restriction when you're only fighting a war on one front.

Were the Horses of Genghis and Atilla stoppable?
Or the Battering Rams of Assyria?
That's the point of a UU in my opinion.
Being almost unstoppable for a specific era.
The problem is that the early game passes too quickly, so that different eras within the ancient era can not really be distiguinshed.
But still, I don't see a problem in making the English renaissance ships nearly unstoppable, or making the Mongol mounted units cost almost nothing.
It just requiers alot of thinking.

As for UUs being additional, rather than replacing a unit type - the main impediment is availability of art. As always, plenty for some civs, next to nothing for others. Also, there's only so many roles that units can play so the UU will other render another unit pointless anyway. For example, there's little point in building Swordsmen if Legionaries can do their job much better. Even if the Legionary is redesigned to not clash with the Swordsman it will almost certainly clash with some other unit. I'm sure we could find a few niches where the UU for a civ could stand out and be truly unique, but there's no way we could do it for 104 of them! Combat in BTS just isn't complex enough.

Legionary can require a bit more advanced technology than Swordmam.

Or another option is making the UU not ultimately better than the regular one - just to be a bonus option to choose, unique for the specific civilization.
For example, the UU can cost more , or cost much less but be weaker.
Or make a UU a defensive unit in contrast to the regular one, and so and so..
But again - requiers alot of thinking.