This looks like another area where the help can be improved... assuming what I once knew can be re-learned, at least!
From the Apolyton BIX/BIQ format documentation, there are the following items in BLDG related to defensive bonuses (not counting Great Wall related bonuses, which I'll keep as a separate post):
Code:
4 long bombardment defense
4 long naval bombardment defense
4 long defense bonus
4 long naval defense bonus
{6 unrelated longs}
4 long air power
4 long naval power
However, the Firaxis editor only contains 5. We can see the extra one by comparing a "new" BIQ (i.e. conquests.biq rules, unmodified from the standard rules) in the Firaxis editor and the Quintillus editor:
It's a little ambiguous because 8 = 8, but we can see that the naval defense field in my editor shows a value of 50, which is also in the BIQ, but which is not displayed in Firaxis's editor.
To make things less ambiguous, I'll add some values for each field in my editor (since the Firaxis one might not preserve Naval defence). I'll set Land Bombard to 1, Air Attack to 2, Defence Bonus to 100, Sea Bombard to 3, Sea Attack to 4, and Naval defence will remain 50.
Now we can see the mapping of names; I'll go Quintillus -> Firaxis.
Land Bombard -> Bombard (for reference, this is 8 for Walls in the standard game)
Air Attack -> Air (this is 8 for SAM Missile Battery in the standard game)
Defence Bonus -> Defense (this is 50 for Walls in the stadard game)
Sea Bombard -> Naval Bombard Def (this is 8 for Coastal Fortress in the standard game)
Sea Attack -> Naval (this is 8 for Coastal Fortress in the standard game)
Naval defence is not present in the Firaxis editor.
I think we're rapidly approaching a point at which a table showing Firaxis Name -> Quintillus Name -> BIQ name -> Description would be helpful. But I have a blueberry cobbler to fetch from the oven, so that will have to wait momentarily.
Edit: Made the table mapping everything together:
I can now see the pattern I was going for with the names. "Attack" is "potency", or "power" in the BIQ documentation. "Bombard" is "how hard it is to destroy" or "bombard defense" in the BIQ documentation (and I agree that it means "attack magnet" as well. Alas, I didn't have consistent verbiage with "Defence Bonus" and "Naval Defence", and with the short names it is confusing to keep straight which one applies to how tough it is to destroy, and which applies to giving a bonus to units.
I think a few items have come out of this:
- Descriptions in the Help files, and possibly tooltips, are needed
- The short names can probably be improved. I think "Sea bombard" is a bad name, as a coastal fortress does bombard, and it also attacks, so it's unclear which is which. Right now I'm leaning:
Land Strength | Air Attack | Unit Bonus
Sea Strength | Sea Attack | Amph. Bonus
As the short names, but am open to other suggestions. I'd like to make it clearer that the leftmost items are how tough it is to destroy, the middle ones are attacks, and the rightmost ones are bonuses for units (for the lower one, situationally).
- It would be good to have a study on whether the Amphibious Bonus does in fact apply. It's possible this has already been studied at some point, but I don't recall reading about it off the top of my head.
As a note, it looks like these labels have been in place since at least April, 2010, i.e. before the public release of the editor. I was hoping perhaps the history of my code might shed some light on this, but it appears that my source was likely the Apolyton documentation. Thus I really don't know if what I'm now calling the "Amph. Bonus" is something that really works, but was left out of the editor for some reason (it is not in the cracked editor, either), or if it was a planned feature that was never completed. Considering charm is a thing, it doesn't seem implausible that it might work, and perhaps Coastal Fortresses have been foiling Berserkers all along.
It seem here is one naval flag too much, but unfortunately at present I cannot explain it better.
