Battlefield promotions with negative effects

[sp00n]

As much as I love the battlefield promotion mechanic, I'm always pretty irritated when a promotion with negative effects is being chosen. Examples would be Berzerker, Fanatic or Piracy.
I would very much prefer if these type of promotions would be excluded from the list of possibilities, as it may completely throw over your strategy (if i.e. your designated defender is suddenly promoted to Berzerker, with -20% defense. I think the decision on those promotions should be exclusively up to yourself.

Is there some way to exclude them yourself by editing an XML file?

 

[Thunderbrd]

hmm... you make a good point. It's not as easy a fix as it may seem though. I'll see what I can do but generally the current method only sorts by the positive elements on the promo and its fairly involved as it is so identifying reasons NOT to add it will be a bit... interesting. I'll put it on my list of to-do tasks and should get to it by the next release.

 

[Faustmouse]

A little off-topic, but am I right that your units will get iE "Shock" more often if they gain a promotion after defeating a melee unit? So a battle-specific-promotion? If not, this would definetly make sense.

 

[sp00n]

A little off-topic, but am I right that your units will get iE "Shock" more often if they gain a promotion after defeating a melee unit? So a battle-specific-promotion? If not, this would definetly make sense.

There are a whole lot of conditional checks for the type of available promotions, i.e. if amphibious, if withdrawn, which terrain type, type of enemy unit, etc.


As for the check itself, there are a few possible approaches I could think of:

• Define a fixed list in the dll file of promotions that should not be considered. Not really flexible and prone to errors.
• Create a new xml file which contains a list of the promotions that are not to be considered.
• Add a new flag in the xml files to the each existing promotion which will exclude them.
• Check for negative effects in the existing FOR loop and if it has one, do not add it to the list of available promotions. Probably the approach with the least work, but the biggest impact on game performance (though I do not know how noticeable that would be).

 

[Acularius]

As much as I love the battlefield promotion mechanic, I'm always pretty irritated when a promotion with negative effects is being chosen. Examples would be Berzerker, Fanatic or Piracy.
I would very much prefer if these type of promotions would be excluded from the list of possibilities, as it may completely throw over your strategy (if i.e. your designated defender is suddenly promoted to Berzerker, with -20% defense. I think the decision on those promotions should be exclusively up to yourself.

Is there some way to exclude them yourself by editing an XML file?

I'm pretty sure that the -20% is offset by a 20% bonus to strength to represent that need to strictly keep your 'berserker' (and I can never think of that word without thinking Berser-Car), on the offensive.

 

[sp00n]

I'm pretty sure that the -20% is offset by a 20% bonus to strength to represent that need to strictly keep your 'berserker' (and I can never think of that word without thinking Berser-Car), on the offensive.

And I'm actually not that sure. I've read some comments about how the different combat modificators are not 100% interchangeable, though that was for vanilla BtS. It may be different for C2C, though I either would need to take a very good look at the source code, or someone really familiar with the mechanics would need to answer that.

 

[Thunderbrd]

It would pretty much be directly offset though there are some funny issues in there that explain the doubt. For example, the entire strength % calculation is entirely modifying the strength of the defender, not the attacker at all.

 

[sp00n]

For example, the entire strength % calculation is entirely modifying the strength of the defender, not the attacker at all.

I'm not quite sure I understand that sentence entirely. Or at all.

 

[Thunderbrd]

lol...

ok, so I have +25% combat modifier and I'm the attacker. I attack my opponent who has a 10% combat modifier. You might think the +25% adjusts my own strength, but what actually happens is, it becomes a -25% strength to defender. Thus the Defender's strength is modified by a total of -15% (-25 + 10 = -15), and then the battle begins with the attacker's strength unmodified at all and the defender's being the only one modified.

How does this really differ? Well... lets say you have +100% against animals, right? You attack, the animal gets -100% strength... a bit different than you getting double strength right? Of course, if the animal is attacking YOU then the bonus 100% against animals would be just that, doubling your own strength.

 

[sp00n]

So if I understand that correctly, having +100% strength if attacking should guarantee a win 100% of the time, as the defender's strength is reduced to zero? Bar any defensive modificators of course.

And against any non-promoted and non-fortified unit, 175% would be the sweet spot?

I must say, if I'd have to describe the combat mechanics in Civ4 from my own experience, I certainly wouldn't have considered that route...

 

[Thunderbrd]

Pretty much, yes. I don't like it really but that's the way it seems to be. There does seem to be a limit to how modified the strength can get so there's always a touch of a fighting chance somehow...

You may experience a test situation at some point... Have a Tracker run across a Mammoth standing on less than good defensive terrain and you may find a very surprising odds estimation when looking at your chances while considering an attack.