Even better.
Caveman 2 Cosmos (ideas/discussions thread)
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strategyonly
C2C Supreme Commander
Did the Thief, Rouge and Assassin lose 1 starting point? They are kind of useless now , not what i intended them for . .
Starting point?
Dancing Hoskuld
Deity
Of course we could always make a set of hidden nationality captive units instead and check the nature of the capturing unit when deciding what to capture. As hidden nationality everyone will attack them so they will not last long.
edit a loded unit would have a much lower chance of escape etc.
Thunderbrd
C2C War Dog
He's saying starting strength.
On Size Matters they are a bit weakened for balance. But if you play with Size Matters Uncut you'll have your full strength units.
Nevertheless, the problem is more that to balance the mod so that they aren't superpowered units that trump all things, they've been allowed to stay where they are while other unit types like the Obsidian units and the Composite Bowmen (military units) have added some strength upgrades that take place during the eras where Criminals are most likely to be useful.
Ultimately, the plan is to let Criminals stay sub-standard combat-wise while improving their abilities to hide and infiltrate and enabling them further things they can do with this. Strike teams would become more dangerous with more common upgrades to keep them a bit more up-to-date with military units so they CAN be much more combat useful to fill the role you originally meant for Criminals - hidden and highly mobile attackers. Strike teams won't spread crime and other nasty effects that would hinder the opponent without combat but criminals will be masters of messing with other players economies.
Rounding it out, Ruffians are getting a little fleshing out in the planning as well so that they are heavily crime spreading to plots (not cities) and while possibly hidden at times, much more visible as they are large and tough to deal with 'neutral' invading forces.
Both Strike Teams and Criminals will be capable of various acts of spy activity, which they already are but this is being reviewed as all things about these units are being reviewed.
Throughout a unit's upgrade path among these three they have bridges and cross-overs. Some units are the best of both worlds. Assassins, for example, are both Criminals AND Strike Teams and as a result are both capable of being lethal in the field as well as being great city infiltrators and economy ruiners.
In short, through Strike Team units, you'll have the capacity I believe you wanted with units that can effectively wear away at stragglers and even at times attack effective military targets while being difficult to keep visibility on. Criminals are evolving to hinder the opponent in much more refined ways. If Criminals are given all the abilities of strike team units as well then you simply have too strong a unit wrapped in one, and for a brief moment in history, the assassin does embody this.
On Size Matters they are a bit weakened for balance. But if you play with Size Matters Uncut you'll have your full strength units.
Nevertheless, the problem is more that to balance the mod so that they aren't superpowered units that trump all things, they've been allowed to stay where they are while other unit types like the Obsidian units and the Composite Bowmen (military units) have added some strength upgrades that take place during the eras where Criminals are most likely to be useful.
Ultimately, the plan is to let Criminals stay sub-standard combat-wise while improving their abilities to hide and infiltrate and enabling them further things they can do with this. Strike teams would become more dangerous with more common upgrades to keep them a bit more up-to-date with military units so they CAN be much more combat useful to fill the role you originally meant for Criminals - hidden and highly mobile attackers. Strike teams won't spread crime and other nasty effects that would hinder the opponent without combat but criminals will be masters of messing with other players economies.
Rounding it out, Ruffians are getting a little fleshing out in the planning as well so that they are heavily crime spreading to plots (not cities) and while possibly hidden at times, much more visible as they are large and tough to deal with 'neutral' invading forces.
Both Strike Teams and Criminals will be capable of various acts of spy activity, which they already are but this is being reviewed as all things about these units are being reviewed.
Throughout a unit's upgrade path among these three they have bridges and cross-overs. Some units are the best of both worlds. Assassins, for example, are both Criminals AND Strike Teams and as a result are both capable of being lethal in the field as well as being great city infiltrators and economy ruiners.
In short, through Strike Team units, you'll have the capacity I believe you wanted with units that can effectively wear away at stragglers and even at times attack effective military targets while being difficult to keep visibility on. Criminals are evolving to hinder the opponent in much more refined ways. If Criminals are given all the abilities of strike team units as well then you simply have too strong a unit wrapped in one, and for a brief moment in history, the assassin does embody this.
Thunderbrd
C2C War Dog
Of course we could always make a set of hidden nationality captive units instead and check the nature of the capturing unit when deciding what to capture. As hidden nationality everyone will attack them so they will not last long.
edit a loded unit would have a much lower chance of escape etc.
I'm not sure what you mean by your first sentence there but I agree with the fact that Hidden Nationality will mean all will attack them as quickly as they can.
That's why I would prefer the loading (chain gang) method. And I like the concept you propose that there would be a reduction in withdrawal and possibly even strength and movement for 'loaded' units guiding their captives home. However the question becomes how to inflict those modifiers on a unit only when its got captives in tow and not just for having the ability to do so. It probably wouldn't be hard to generate a status auto-promotion mechanism where 'if loaded' the unit suffers a particular penalty as prescribed by the unit or promotion that enables the unit to load other units in the first place. This could be quite interesting for improved naval depth later too.
The main trick to this will be AI and Koshling pointed that out a while ago. However, I'm looking at a deep re-invention of the AI's for HN unitlines anyhow and including programming for loading/unloading/loaded/not-loaded states would be pretty easy to do along the way.
Dancing Hoskuld
Deity
We have Captive - Neanderthal, Captive - Military and Captive - Civilian. I just make a version of each of these that has the hidden nationality flag set, IE Captive - Neanderthal (HN), Captive - Military (HN) and Captive - Civilian (HN). Then all I need to do in the code is check the capturing unit and if they have hidden nationality make make the captive the hidden nationality version.
edit You will need to "unload" them at some stage. I have my captives going in differing directions as soon as they reach my borders.
Combat with such loaded units would also need to take into account the captives desire to be free. Of course if they are being attacked by someone they don't want to be captured by they, cannibals perhaps, may assist their captives.
At the moment we don't know who the captives came from.
edit You will need to "unload" them at some stage. I have my captives going in differing directions as soon as they reach my borders.
Combat with such loaded units would also need to take into account the captives desire to be free. Of course if they are being attacked by someone they don't want to be captured by they, cannibals perhaps, may assist their captives.
At the moment we don't know who the captives came from.
strategyonly
C2C Supreme Commander
ahaha yeah "starting" DUH lol my bad . . . and i didnt know that about the "uncut" thx . .
Thunderbrd
C2C War Dog
Yeah, that would be easy enough. Though I think it would be more memory saving to just have that same code check be made and apply a Hidden Nationality adding promo instead of defining whole new units and selecting the right ones. That approach also begs for inconsistencies to potentially creep in between the two mirroring unit definitions.
I've been wanting to program the bAddsHiddenNationality tag in promos for a while now anyhow.
Oh definitely, as soon as the loaded unit reaches its own borders as long as there isn't any obvious dangers afoot they should drop off and send the captives on their way. Then return to whatever they were doing.
Hmm... that could mean differing 'loaded state' penalizing based on player-wide factors. Tricky. So what would add the modifiers to the loaded unit? The units that are loaded or just the fact that it is. Can we simply assume that loaded captives aren't too happy to be marched along in a chain gang to begin with and would all want to escape regardless of the situation?
Or what they were. I've been thinking that perhaps the old unit that was captured should not be killed but should instead be placed in a state of suspension off the map and that the original unit's player and original id is saved on the captive so that the captive could be returned to use if liberated.
I programmed it just for you my friend! It's to make it so that units aren't tweaked by their starting quality/group/size categories from their original stats but are instead using their starting quality/group/size categories to define what the baseline for those units are. It's hard to explain in simple terms but suffice it to say if you want to play with size matters but you don't like the way size matters tweaks with the starting stats of some unitlines, size matters uncut should be your selection.
strategyonly
C2C Supreme Commander
Dancing Hoskuld
Deity
Perhaps you should look at what Stolenrays did with prisoners of war in his Advanced Diplomacy mod. It must identify the nation it is captured from in some way.
It has some other interesting ideas also but as it is in the dll (and C++) I wont go near it.
It has some other interesting ideas also but as it is in the dll (and C++) I wont go near it.
Thunderbrd
C2C War Dog
If you plot out what it is you'll need I can start considering how to provide it. Anymore it's easier to program an idea out than it is to merge someone else's implementation of a concept.
Dancing Hoskuld
Deity
I was thinking that how he implemented how the POW exchange mechanism worked, after all it must know where you got the prisoners from. Would you trade if you were going to get someone elses troops or barbarians
. I'll look into how it looks in game.
. I'll look into how it looks in game.Just to clarify. "Size matters uncut" keeps the original stats. of a unit.
You can not break down an original unit into smaller units. Whom, I assume if you could would be weaker.
But you can merge 2 units into 1 unit. Again I assume gives additional strength?
Does this merging, also affect the movement ability of units? More units take more space so movement is slower, or less may be faster.
Thunderbrd
C2C War Dog
Size Matters Uncut doesn't change the ability to split or merge nor any of the consequences of doing so.
Mathematically speaking, on Size Matters standard, units with a 15 total SM cat rating (Their SM Cat Rating is the sum total of all 3 SM categories, Size/Group/Quality, values they possess) have normal base scores. However, if their total SM Cat rating starts off at less or more than 15 then they are modified when they come into the game accordingly.
Each SM Cat rating up a unit achieves adds +150% strength (and many other scores) onto the unit. Thus if I have a SM Cat rating of 15 and my unit has a 6 str then my unit starts with 6 str. However, if the same unit were established to start with a SM Cat rating because of a particularly high Size, Group Volume or Quality rating that isn't fully countered by the other two having deficiencies, then my unit would start with a str of 9. The same is true going in the opposite direction.
On Size Matters Uncut, the baseline is not 15, it's whatever the unit's particular total from its beginning combat classes starts at. Thus the unit above with a 16 total SM Cat rating would still start at 6 strength but if merged with 2 other units of the same type would gain another SM Cat so would thus be given a base of 9 str for the merged unit.
Merges require 3 units of the same type and creates one unit with a Group Volume 1 higher. Splitting creates 3 units of the same type, just a Group Volume category less. This works the same in both versions of the option. This, however, is not the only way units can have their SM Cat total adjusted. There are promos that allow units to increase their Quality rating as well. They inflict a heavy penalty for their use and create some very interesting choices as to if and when you want to use them... they are very powerful but will keep the unit from any further development for a long long time.
Movement is not affected, just as it wouldn't be if you marched an army of 9 units down the road or one it would be the same. Many values are affected though and some values only consider the Size and Group Volume and ignore Quality (for purposes of unit load volume for example.)
So in summary, Size Matters Uncut is exactly the same as Size Matters with the one exception that some units are balanced a bit differently in Size Matters. I personally feel this has given Size Matters core a bit more room to balance itself properly in light of not all units being able to merge or split but for traditionalist players who appreciated some of the core game balance settings and don't like some of the rebalance choices made in Size Matters core, Size Matters Uncut was invented.
At the moment there is no way to make a building provide new bonus/manufactures when a tech is researched. I was thinking this could easily be achieved by just making any bonus provided by a building not have any effect (not count as an owned resource) until said bonus has been revealed by a tech.
<BonusInfo>
<TechReveal>X</TechReveal>
</BonusInfo>
I find it quite odd that a resource that is not revealed can be in the resource list and apply its synergy bonuses; because this means that the <TechReveal> tag holds absolutely no meaning for non-map bonuses.
I can think of several application of this otherwise useless tag for non-map bonuses if the tag got changed like I'm suggesting.
<BonusInfo>
<TechReveal>X</TechReveal>
</BonusInfo>
I find it quite odd that a resource that is not revealed can be in the resource list and apply its synergy bonuses; because this means that the <TechReveal> tag holds absolutely no meaning for non-map bonuses.
I can think of several application of this otherwise useless tag for non-map bonuses if the tag got changed like I'm suggesting.
Thunderbrd
C2C War Dog
You could have the building spawn a secondary effect building with autobuild settings that require a tech. The secondary effect building could provide the resource.
Would it not be more elegant to give usage to an otherwise useless tag.
This tag holds afaik absolutely no meaning for non-map bonuses if buildings can provide the resource before it is revealed. I could put NONE or FUTURETECH in this tag for all manufacture bonuses and no one would notice as it wouldn't change a thing in game.
Thunderbrd
C2C War Dog
Tech Reveal isn't the tag you'd use for that. The tag that controls trade access is where the city can count or not count a tech.
Already it would achieve:
Already it would achieve:
Except that 'revealed' in this case means 'tradeable'. A city can't use a bonus that isn't tradeable so even if the building provides it long before that point, the city won't have the bonus in its inventory and it won't be added to the trade network until then.
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