Armies

[Thalassicus]

If you look closely, you'll see lancers->cavalry can only occur with ancient ruins, a circumstance so rare it would not be a serious gameplay issue if changed.

I never noticed AT->helicopters before. That makes a very good case for lancers->AT, since it's not a matter of realism.

Edit: Oh and something else...

Would require removing the mounted penalty from cavalry and in turn giving lancers a (+50%?) bonus against mounted units

The opposite of a 50% penalty is a 100% bonus... even then it's not equal matchup due to bonuses being additive... higher base strength increases effectiveness, and cavalry has a higher base. If the modifier were moved from Cavalry to Lancers it would turn into a 75% bonus. What you have to consider is a "typical" situation with bonuses on top of that (Great General and/or one or two promotions and terrain modifiers). I just estimate based on gameplay experience, this is why I posted the full table of the siege damage change in different situations. I haven't statistically analyzed the average modifier situation of all the battles across hundreds of test games or anything crazy like that.

Anyway, I like the idea of the counter-unit upgrade chain and will implement it.

Changing the promotions is a little more problematic. Right now Lancers and Knights trump Cavalry... changing the promotions around would result in Lancers and Cavalry trumping Knights. This would be countering units in the opposite technological direction, which I don't think is what the developers intend in this particular case. I think just providing the upgrade chain without altering promotions would be more in the realm of balancing things vs new gameplay.

 

[Joneill]

Anyway, I like the idea of the counter-unit upgrade chain and will implement it.

Changing the promotions is a little more problematic. Right now Lancers and Knights trump Cavalry... changing the promotions around would result in Lancers and Cavalry trumping Knights. This would be countering units in the opposite technological direction, which I don't think is what the developers intend in this particular case. I think just providing the upgrade chain without altering promotions would be more in the realm of balancing things vs new gameplay.

Personally, I'm not a big fan of the original "balance", which allows knights (and even moreso, the Siamese UU) to beat cavalry. You don't have to worry about an enemies' outdated units if you're fielding rifleman, so why should the player be penalized for teching to cavalry instead? I guess one could always create a new promotion for lancers specifically against cavalry, so that they keep their relative power against knights (but that might take things too far away from vanilla gameplay...).

Another thing about unit-upgradepaths: Since Chariot Archers (and UUs) are now officially classified as ranged units, wouldn't it make sense to have them upgrade to crossbowmen instead of knights? Would make promoting these units feel like less of a waste by allowing their upgrade to make use of their promotions.

 

[Perkus]

Since Chariot Archers (and UUs) are now officially classified as ranged units, wouldn't it make sense to have them upgrade to crossbowmen instead of knights? Would make promoting these units feel like less of a waste by allowing their upgrade to make use of their promotions.

I've been running it that way for a while - got that from some other mod.

I also run Submarine -> Nuclear Submarine, and Bomber -> Stealth Bomber. Realism issues aside, I think those two are no-brainers to add. No worse that Fighter -> Jet Fighter, anyway.

 

[Thalassicus]

Battleship -> Missile Cruiser also makes sense, was in IV.

Instead of changing the upgrade path for Chariot Archers, I implemented a simple feature in the next version which swaps melee and ranged promotions so units will always have the correct version. I did some testing and it appears to work. I placed an archer with shock and spearman with accuracy; on the next turn the promotions were reversed.

Still, this is only basic testing -- if anyone encounters bugs with this please point it out!

 

[Perkus]

This just occurred to me: when you allow upgrades from Lancer or Cavalry to Tank, don't you want to remove the Penalty on Defense / Penalty vs. Mounted promotions? I run the full Obsolete Promotions mod, so I wouldn't have noticed that your mod isn't doing this also.

Code would be:
<UnitPromotions>
<Update>
<Where Type="PROMOTION_DEFENSE_PENALTY" />
<Set LostWithUpgrade="true" />
</Update>
<Update>
<Where Type="PROMOTION_MOUNTED_PENALTY" />
<Set LostWithUpgrade="true" />
</Update>
</UnitPromotions>

I don't think any other units use this 2 promotions, do they?

 

[Thalassicus]

Well, up to this point I've simply been recommending the simultaneous use of this mod and Obsolete Promotions. I got permission from Lord Olleus to merge that mod into this one, so I'll do so in the next version.

 

[juances19]

I like your mods... that's why I'm going to translate them

	<Language_ES_ES>
		<Row Tag="TXT_KEY_PROMOTION_ANTI_CAVALRY">
			<Text>Bonificación contra Caballería (100)</Text>
		</Row>
		<Row Tag="TXT_KEY_PEDIA_PROMOTION_ANTI_CAVALRY">
			<Text>Bonificación contra Caballería (100)</Text>
		</Row>
		<Update>
			<Where Tag="TXT_KEY_PROMOTION_CITY_SIEGE" />
			<Set Text="Demolición" />
		</Update>
		<Update>
			<Where Tag="TXT_KEY_PROMOTION_CITY_SIEGE_HELP" />
			<Set Text="50% de Bonificación contra ciudades.[NEWLINE]40% de Bonificación contra unidades fortificadas" />
		</Update>
		<Update>
			<Where Tag="TXT_KEY_RESOURCE_COAL_HELP" />
			<Set Text="Lo utilizan las Fábricas." />
		</Update>
		<Update>
			<Where Tag="TXT_KEY_UNIT_HELP_IRONCLAD" />
			<Set Text="Unidad más poderosa que las Fragatas y con la incapacidad de entrar en las casillas de Océano." />
		</Update>
	</Language_ES_ES>

 

[Thalassicus]

Thank you again juances19, I will include this with the next version.

Question: has anyone actually played enough challenging late-game matches to get a sense of how nukes are? I've read they're underwhelming compared to GDR's, similar resources but reusable. I haven't had any personal experience though, all my games have ended or were sure victories by the time nukes could come on board.

 

[clearbeard]

Well, up to this point I've simply been recommending the simultaneous use of this mod and Obsolete Promotions. I got permission from Lord Olleus to merge that mod into this one, so I'll do so in the next version.

Will you be allowing upgraded UU's to keep their promos during the merge?

 

[jwallstone]

EDIT - My mistake on the promotions.
Although you should consider making the Cho-Ko-Nu ability LostWithUpgrade. It is designed in vanilla to go to rifleman (which will get blitz, so it's fairly useless), but if you incorporate crossbow upgrade -> cannon, that'll be too powerful.


And I don't understand the motivation for increasing the strength of ranged units. Can you point to some thread where this was reasoned about? It seems that currently you can wipe out large portions of incoming forces with ranged units, which is a big part of sitting back and wiping out an AI's attacking force and counter-attacking with minimal resistance. I'd think they'd need to be nerfed.

 

[Perkus]

@Thal:
Three things in Units v.7. You have Sipahi (Lancers) upgrading to Tanks, that should be ATs, no? I think you missed adding the B17 -> Stealth Bomber upgrade for the Americans? And in the readme you use the example of Pikemen upgrading to Riflemen, but since we just made them upgrade to Lancers instead, it's kind of confusing.

EDIT: 1 more - shouldn't Sipahi also be getting PROMOTION_ANTI_CAVALRY like Lancers , and Cossacks losing PROMOTION_MOUNTED_PENALTY like Cavalry ?
I like the promotion swapping table, BTW. Slick.

@jwallstone:
I don't like the idea of crossbows upgrading to cannons any more. I was using it for a while, but I think it's too cheap & easy a way to get experienced siege units, which otherwise take a long time to build. They already have their own full line of catapult/trebuchet/cannon. But I don't like crossbowmen becoming riflemen that much either.

 

[Joneill]

I like the promotion swap in the new version, really useful addition.

However, some of the new lategame upgradepaths introduce the same problem that already exists with warriors, swordsmen and horsemen in the original game: These units can still be built when their upgrade-unit is available, which makes building or buying the old unit and upgrading it more cost-effective than actually building the new unit. In these new cases it's even worse, since the units you added upgrade-paths to never actually obsolete (unlike horsemen, warriors and swordsmen).

 

[Thalassicus]

Thanks for all the feedback! A lot of data edits went into the new version so it's easy to overlook a few things here or there.

@clearbeard
UU special abilities remain with the unit when upgraded. When doing the Civilizations balance mod, I found that civs seem to be balanced with this in mind. (Ottomans for example would be really bad without UU specials sticking around.)


@jwallstone
Since I added promotion swapping, crossbow->cannon is no longer necessary or recommended (though even if you did upgrade the cho-ko-nu special is just a fancy name for Logistics). Ranged promotions on the crossbowman will convert to melee ones on the rifleman. You have a good point about it becoming obsolete with blitz. Though in truth, it isn't really obsolete until you upgrade to Mech Infantry. Until then I think the cho-ko-nu special is identical to blitz. One thing I could do is simply replace the cho-ko-nu special with Logistics, so it would be swapped out when upgraded...

There's several big disadvantages to ranged units, detailed in the "rationale" section of the first post. Comparing Archers to Warriors for example, they cost nearly double, cannot benefit from flanking, receive less experience, require more tech progress, and have half the defensive strength. All this just to be able to attack 1 tile further is a rather steep penalty. With the change, archer attack damage is about equal to the damage of 1 warrior with a Flanking bonus (though since archers still cost so much, you could do double the damage with warriors). Another big penalty, in context, is you have to delay getting Horsemen or Swordsmen if you detour to Archers... then have to build fewer Horses/Swords.


@Perkus
I'll fix those errors, thanks for pointing them out. A better example for the readme is Artillery -> Rocket Artillery upgrading towed pieces to a self-propelled chassis.


@Joneill
That's the problem of the differing resources, same as the warrior->swordsman thing. Most options have disadvantages:

• Units cannot upgrade warrior->swords and battleship->cruiser at all -- frustrating when you have experienced units.
• Units upgrade and go obsolete -- what if you have lots of Oil but no Aluminum, or no Iron?
• Units upgrade and don't obsolete -- Avoids the first two problems, but can be exploited with both resources and 1 extra turn.

I'm still working on the best way to solve the problem with the tools we have. I consider buy-upgrade an exploit since upgrading is a mechanic designed to let you keep experienced units around, not to reduce the cost of rush-buying.

I think the best solution might be restricting upgrades to experienced units, possibly 1 xp for sea/air and 16 xp for ground. It would mitigate the warrior issue too, since you'd require a barracks and armory to utilize the build-upgrade exploit. I believe this might be possible with the current tools, by modifying the unit action panel UI so the Upgrade button checks for XP level.

 

[Joneill]

There's several big disadvantages to ranged units, detailed in the "rationale" section of the first post. Comparing Archers to Warriors for example, they cost nearly double, cannot benefit from flanking, receive less experience, require more tech progress, and have half the defensive strength. All this just to be able to attack 1 tile further is a rather steep penalty. With the change, archer attack damage is about equal to the damage of 1 warrior with a Flanking bonus (though since archers still cost so much, you could do double the damage with warriors). Another big penalty, in context, is you have to delay getting Horsemen or Swordsmen if you detour to Archers... then have to build fewer Horses/Swords.

Of course, an advantage of archers is that they can inflict damage without taking any in return. There is also a point at which additional melee units won't be able to contribute to a given battle since all tiles next to the target are occupied, at which point additional range support helps even more.
I don't mind the bonus for the basic archer, but babylonian bowmen seem to not need an increase in strength. Chariots (as well as Keshiks/Camel Archer) seem really powerful with the ability to move after attacking, at least in the hands of a human player, so the damage boost seems a bit too much on these, too.

@Joneill
That's the problem of the differing resources, same as the warrior->swordsman thing. All three options have disadvantages:

• Units cannot upgrade warrior->swords and battleship->cruiser at all (which is frustrating when you have experienced units)
• Units upgrade and go obsolete - what if you have lots of Oil but no Aluminum, or no Iron?
• Units upgrade and don't obsolete - exploitable, but requires both resources and 1 extra turn.

I didn't factor in resources, true, so it's probably less of an issue for the late game unit-upgrades you added. The warrior->swordsmen thing still bothers me though, especcially since you could still build spearmen if you find yourself at iron working with no iron (and your improvement mod reveals iron much earlier, so there is less chance of a bad surprise).

 

[Bibor]

Thalassicus, what do you say about giving cities extra extra HP with defensive buildings?

Something in line with:
City Walls - extra 10 HP
Castle - extra 5 HP
Army Base - extra 5 HP

City strength remains the same, but it takes two or three times more turns to get a city down. This would also encourage bringing more siege and ranged units to attack cities that feature city-walls and later defenses.

 

[jwallstone]

Ok. I agree then if crossbow -> cannon is not done anymore. Just to clarify though, the Cho-ko-nu ability is not the same as Logistics - it is additive. Meaning a ranged unit with both gets 3 attacks. Also, it is not the same as blitz, which gives as many attacks as movement points allow, whereas it and logistics strictly give +1 attack.

I don't know what you mean by it isn't "really" obsolete until mech inf. Rifleman can get blitz too.

On the issue of ranged units, I looked through again and now I understand that you are only strengthening archer units, not siege units. I agree with that now, given that in my experience it was more the siege units that were too powerful, and the archery units were okay.

So, I basically you made siege units' base attack lower (to 80%) but boosted bonuses against certain targets? (fortified, cities) I so, I think that's a good change.

 

[jwallstone]

One more suggestion: the code to swap promotions could be improved. Right now, for every single unit, it has to loop through every row in your table and compare. You could save a lot of processing but just checking that a swap needs to be considered - for example, that the unit is actually a combat unit.

Another time saver: if it does not have Shock 1, it definitely won't have shock 2,3 so just +2 to the row to skip a few iterations. Likewise for drill.

Probably won't make that much difference in actual time, but I'm just trying to offer helpful suggestions.

EDIT: Even better, couldn't this just be done when a player actually upgrades a unit?

 

[jwallstone]

Not really a problem, but the Caravel -> Ironclad upgrade update is listed twice. The second time two rows down.

 

[Thalassicus]

@Joneill
True about one-sided damage with ranged units, they still have the other steep penalties however (cost, weak defense, slower xp, etc) which I think makes them less powerful than melee's flanking capability and low cost. The exception of course is on a crowded battlefield as you mention, when flanking bonuses become more limited. This is more likely for crossbows than archers. By that point though, knights are around with 150% attack and 300% defense of crossbows, plus double movement. Most strategies seem to focus on units like horsemen, swordsmen, knights etc, all the melee units. You're right that bowmen are quite useful, I might nerf Babylon's UA instead, as the UA seems to be the main problem people point out with Babylon. With UUs it's civ balance as a whole you gotta look at. Maybe if they got only a free scientist or double scientist generation instead of both?

I'm uncertain whether chariot archers are more powerful than horsemen with 7. Horsemen cost 130% yet have 160% attack, 370% defense, benefit from flanking and move two to three times as fast in rough terrain (depending on if they have Mobility). Chariot archers can be maneuvered in a situation where you can attack, move away and attack with another, yet horsemen can also do that. It's just a little easier with chariots. I think horsemen are still a little better than chariots, yet they do require an additional tech so it seems fair.


@Bibor
I like the idea and would do it if it were possible. I searched the xml and lua API for "health" "hp" and "hitpoint" and didn't find any results unfortunately. There's a "HealRateChange" property for buildings which I think increases the healing rate of the city, based on a comment by Afforess about future plans for his Active City Defenses mod. I could do a combination of lower cost, higher strength, and/or improved city healing. Maybe Castles and Military Bases each add +1 healing?


@jwallstone
What I mean about Blitz and obsolescence at mech infantry is riflemen and infantry only have 2. Since each attack consumes a movement point, I think the 2 attacks of Blitz are identical to the 2 of the Chu-ko-nu special (correct me if I'm wrong!), until these units upgrade to Mech Infantry with 4. Likewise, Chu-ko-nu / Riflemen / Infantry don't get a double bonus from Logistics and the special since they're capped at 2 attacks. Logistics gets converted to Blitz anyway. Since this ability and Logistics are basically the same, I could replace the Chu-ko-nu special with Logistics, that way it and Logistics can't be acquired at the same time, and it would be Blitz for Mech Infantry.

Regarding ranged units, you've got it right. Archers, chariot archers, and wooden ships have +15% damage (this gives +1 to archers, +2 to crossbows, etc). Unpromoted siege are -20% damage against normal units, but slightly more damage against cities and fortified units. I did this by reducing their base -20% while changing their anti-city promotion to +50% vs city and +40% vs fortified units (named it "Demolish"). Thinking of it as actual damage against various targets (80% vs units, 120% vs cities) was an easier way for me to conceptualize it.

You're absolutely right a check to see if units are a combat unit would be simple to do and probably speed execution of promotion swapping, since a good proportion of units on the map are likely workers. Thank you for the idea.

The swap promotions code was done focusing on readability and keeping the process simple. There's always tradeoffs between that and efficiency, and I think there's few enough units on the map the execution time is probably only a fraction of a second. Adding checks can even increase execution time in certain situations, since condition checks are inefficient (I think jumps are 42x the cycles of an addition on Intel processors due to how pipelining works). As a result I'm uncertain skipping promotions would save time. The condition [if unit does not have shock I, skip shock II] would require checking prerequisites of shock II, likely just as much processing as checking for shock I directly. I could code the table in tiers (melee1 melee2 melee3 in a single row) though it wouldn't scale well if someone wants to mod in shock IV and shock V promos... would require changing the xml structure. Checking each one individually seems simpler.

I agree the ideal solution would be to simply run it when units upgrade! I searched through the Events and didn't a hook for that unfortunately. One might exist, but the documentation we have for Lua is scarce at best. If you can find such an event it'd be great. The GUI has an event when the upgrade button is clicked, it wouldn't run for AIs though.

 

[jwallstone]

Okay great, I agree with your changes to archery/siege units then.

I understand excessive checks are probably not worthwhile. Just wanted to throw that out there as an idea, but I'm glad you gave it a thought.

If I find an upgrade hook, I'll let you know!