Barbarian Identity and Hidden nationality.

actually, their is a lot of added strategy (mainly in multiplayer) for such an implementation of hidden nationality (looking like strength 1 zero exp hooded units).

For instance ... once city is attacked by a stack of warriors and the other a stack of superunits.
The player doesnt know which one to defend, and given its Svart most likely not attacking the super unit army means an extra army of Illusioned units to deal with when their attack arrives

This way even during war HN has a purpose
 
actually, their is a lot of added strategy (mainly in multiplayer) for such an implementation of hidden nationality (looking like strength 1 zero exp hooded units).

For instance ... once city is attacked by a stack of warriors and the other a stack of superunits.
The player doesnt know which one to defend, and given its Svart most likely not attacking the super unit army means an extra army of Illusioned units to deal with when their attack arrives

This way even during war HN has a purpose
You're right that there is a lot of added strategy to making units have hidden strength. But that's not hidden nationality. Hidden Nationality already has a purpose, and is perfectly suited to that purpose. All it's missing is the fact that units can still be identified by art or as a UU.
Making everything about a unit be hidden is an entirely different ability, and should not be connected with Hidden Nationality. They do completely different things.
 
As to art/UU issues, for those who've had experience with the Mercenaries system integrated into Orbis, you can end up hiring some really colorful combinations of forces. Hire an elven archer, hire a dwarf cannon, hire an Amurite mage, whatever, casting the relevant Mercenary hiring spell brings up a little menu / GUI thing to check out. Now, none of those guys are by default in possession of the "HN" promotion, but I just wanted to mention this system from the perspective of sometimes being able to access extremely unusual combinations of forces without luck of the draw in terms of Command promos or a Tolerant/Conqueror type of trait and building funny racial UUs etc. fair and square (or the "Diverse" trait that some people have discussed for Kurios or Grigori in their own modmods).

Anyhow, if "several ways to have unusual UUs" end up in a game, those systems existing alongside something like this whole "maybe they're barbarian raiders... or not!" business may just further help to camoflage the occasional human player taking best advantage of any kind of masquerading as some other type of force, not an indirect act of war. Again, if part of the desire here is for enhanced subtlety, tossing a few extra red herrings in the mix may end up being desirable.
 
The question I would ask is:

Does a Civilization that is able to acquire Hidden Nationality units, want a friendly Civ (at peace, possibly with an OB agreement) to attacking the first Civ's HN units because they don't know that they're not hostile? I know that when I've kept captured Spiders or such in my cities, without Declaring, I've had supposedly friendly Civs come through and go, "ZOMG! It's a hideous Spider! I must kill it!" Doesn't matter that it's sitting on my city, under a full stack of my own, fully acknowledged units -- "nope, it can't possibly be yours, it must be destroyed."

I have some recommendations for whatever Hidden Nationality changes are made:

When your own HN units are in your own territory, they gain a promotion (opponent hidden) called "Last Line", meaning that they would only allow themselves to be attacked as the last line of defense for a tile. It could also provide a very high withdrawal boost, which when a withdrawal happens, would automatically apply the "Unmask" promotion:

suppress "Last Line"
suppress "Hidden Nationality"
add "Remask" promotion (disabled)
wait 3 turns (or however many)
enable "Remask" promotion; if activated, remove suppression

This would allow your HN units to avoid being killed by "friendly" units, even many Marksmen units, but at the temporary cost of revealing themselves. If they are really needed to defend a tile within your borders, they can intentionally activate the "Unmask" power and not have to activate "Remask" the instant it's available. (I would have HN units that are travelling out of their homelands activate "Remask" as soon as they're able after leaving cultural borders).

Outside of their own borders, HN units would have a tougher time. Part of the reason is that I don't know if it might be more difficult to come up with a process in XML or Python that would do a check as the unit is attacked versus the other Civ's diplomatic relations with their Civ, and then apply a different defensive promotion based on that score. I would want to balance out ease of avoiding the attack, including not defeating the attacker*, with the amount of time they would have to be "Unmasked" (maybe this would use variations on "Found Out", as a better term).

*Maybe the "Last Line" promotion and the outside-borders promotion would both have a diplomacy-check chance to avoid inadvertently defeating (while defending) a friendly Civ's unit that thought it was attacking a hostile unit. Kind of forcing a withdrawal of the attacking unit.

Being "Unmasked"/"Found Out" outside of cultural borders might also be harder to recover from, with some different options:

- Return to cultural borders to activate "Remask" (this might be too harsh, but it's more hardcore)
- Random chance for "Remask" to enable every turn, guaranteed in cultural borders, always checked before the Civ's next turn (if they are "Unmasked" this turn, they are guaranteed to be "Unmasked" for the entire turn)
- Have to "Lie Low" action, which would be a "Heal"-style Fortify, greatly increasing the random chance to "Remask", but interrupted like "Heal"

Operating in the borders of a friendly Civ is even more complicated, especially depending on how friendly the two Civs are (I would advocate only allowing Teams and Permanent Alliances to fall into this category). These friendly Civs would always view their ally's HN units as aligned, and wouldn't have to worry at all about attacking them out of turn. (This may be how it works already, but I don't MP or use Permanent Alliances usually.) This works both ways, though...

All of this so far has shown the HN unit defending itself, not attacking. When HN units attack, there would be a similar diplomatic check done, but only checking for "team/ally", "not war", or "war". "Team/ally" would prevent attacking the unit, "war" has no effect, but "not war" blacklists the unit, preventing them from taking advantage of withdrawal chances for HN units or even "Unmasking"/declaring nationality for a time afterward. (This is to prevent a Civ from pulling a "diplomatic immunity" deal where they pillage and capture Workers** from an ally, then "Unmask" to avoid reprisals. May need another promotion that allows Barbarian-allied Civs to attack a blacklisted unit.) Blacklisting would require a similar "Remask" or "Lie Low" action to remove.

**Do units captured by an HN unit show up as HN as well, or already as the capturing Civ's unit? If they start off as HN, then they should follow all of the above rules for HN units. If they're already Civ-aligned, that would seem a dead give-away and might be reason for diplomatic penalties.

On top of all of the above, the player or AI Civ should be able to, per unit, lock a unit into being truly Hidden Nationality or not Hidden Nationality (standard process). This "Never Admit" promotion would make them inelligible for any of the bonuses and limitations placed on regular HN units, although I think that HN units of any type shouldn't be able to pull "diplomatic immunity" crap, and should use the same blacklisting mechanic. This could also be set as an option at the start of game options window. This would allow them to retain "plausible deniability" about units doing naughty things in their "allies" lands, or just retain the hardcore aspect of using these units.

All in all, I think this module or change idea could really improve the usability of Hidden Nationality units, and I would love to see someone take a shot at this.
 
Ah, but the problem is that that works in reverse as well. If you're supposed to be at peace with the Raiders and your move into one of their stacks, and it just happens to be secretly a HN enemy, you get combat even if neither of of you wanted it. The concept of Hidden Nationality just doesn't work with a faction you can be at peace with.
What's wrong with that? You might lose, but then you might win. It keeps everyone on their toes. Most likely, people check to see if combat odds pop up. It keep people on their toes (and suspicious), which fits the theme.

There are solutions, though. 'Peace with raiders' could mean that even disguised raiders can't attack that one civ unless it breaks peace with raiders.


If you want the Raiders to be untrustworthy like that, it also doesn't make sense to make them be at peace with anyone, because no one would trust them enough to make peace. I know if I had a faction that routinely turned out to be traitors and backstabbed me, I certainly wouldn't let them wander freely through my territory. But that's what happens with peace.
The same could be said of the Savages, the Animals, the Demons, or most any civilization in fact. Anyone (and anything) in Erebus can want to kill you for most any reason (or no reason at all). People 'at peace' with such a group are the exception that proves the rule.


Raider peace will be further disadvantaged by the fact that you won't get any warnings enemy units have been sighted. You'll be left with the prospect of manually checking every unit in your territory for combat odds every turn. And even that process isn't always entirely reliable.
Go back to what was suggested earlier: peace with raiders means peace with ALL raiders.

Basically what I'm saying is that, if your goal is to make a faction that harbors enemy spies, why would any want peace with them? Would Rhoanna sit down at a bargaining table and say "I know the last four negotiators were assassins, but I've got a good feeling about you, so we'll let you wander through our territory whenever you want."
Would give you a good incentive to boot them eventually, wouldn't it then? That or take the risk.

Nothing says that Peace with Raiders have to be good the entire game. Once your enemies start using it against you, you have to deal with the consequences of it as well.

Of course, there would always be the question of why your raiders aren't distracting them to the point of not being able to focus on you...






So, in summation, you could make one Civ 'Raider Immune' much like peace with Savages, or you could make it a balancing act on the part of the player. Which, to be frank, is perfectly fair.
 
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