Design: Units

[Kael]

Did I strike a nerve?

Thats funny. You can go to hell Xereq! That wasn't my intent.

I know you have this planned, but the barbs get bigger and badder over time, but eh animals stay pretty much the same, also I have a lion with combat V but nothing to upgrade it to..wait i jsut got an inspiration, what if there are magic-user-like higher forms for animals. You can't ubild them, you can't even build animals, but after an animal hits lever three it can upgrade to an alpha animal with greater strength and or speed at a hunting lodge; then at level six upgrade to a dire version at a grove.

Also, aplace whre you could train animals would be a cool addition for balseraph. It could require three to ten caged animals of the type before the animal was built and could have an acrobat model in the basic one, a harlequin model in the second tier, and a beastmaster type model in the third tier. Perhaps for balance reasons you could give it to everybody or make it so that the 'tamed' animals cannot be caged.

Yeah, I dont know that they need to be scalable forever though. Some objects should be front loaded (powerful early but they dont scale well), back loaded (weak early on but they scale to become very powerful) and some should be balanced. Animals have been given a little scability by being allowed to level, but I don't think they should be expected to upgrade like main units.

I did like the spell Psychic_Llamas posted in the spell thread that increased the icombat of all the worlds animals. That could be very interesing to see implemented.

 

[Xereq]

Thats funny. You can go to hell Xereq! That wasn't my intent.

Yeah, I dont know that they need to be scalable forever though. Some objects should be front loaded (powerful early but they dont scale well), back loaded (weak early on but they scale to become very powerful) and some should be balanced. Animals have been given a little scability by being allowed to level, but I don't think they should be expected to upgrade like main units.

I did like the spell Psychic_Llamas posted in the spell thread that increased the icombat of all the worlds animals. That could be very interesing to see implemented.

I understand, its just that I am bieng beset by barbarians form all angles on a huge map with less civs than normal, and the lion and panther units I have with combat 5 & 4 would be worth the investment of an upgrade in my perspective. I am playing as dwarves and my golems don't gain any experience so I trained my animals just to see how big they could get, now i've kinda hit a dead end.

 

[Sureshot]

I really like the idea of giving the red dragon the hero promotion. I find myself wishing it was a little more of a challenge to get rid of the big guy.

Along those lines I was wondering if it would be possible to have the red's city spawn some mini-dragons/whelps/hatchlings or whatever instead of the regular orcs. These little fellas could roam around the perimiter of the city like regular animals. That way the red dragon's city can have a countryside full of his little minions, making it a little bit harder to just amble up to the city and take it.

I really like this idea. In my current game I've got a barbarian city right on my border with huge culture and the giant red dragon. But I'm not scared, he doesn't move, and the only thing coming my way from there is Archers.

It'd be really neat if whelps roamed around the way animals do, but if they gain enough experience they can become a mid sized dragon that can enter civ borders (like a non-animal barbarian), and then after a certain level there if they take over a city they become a full sized one and become stationary there. It'd be like having mini-civs within the barbarian state, and allow serious Dragon fear pandemics.

Added:
Also, it'd be neat to have similar things with other types of creatures. Like a huge Kraken or other sea monster spawns in a coastal barbarian city and doesn't leave (nesting or something) and then its younglings roam around the sea like animals (no going in civ borders), if one gets lucky and levels up a bit they get bigger and become mid sized and capable of attacking cities, and then if they level enough and take over a coastal city they become huge and stay in that city to progress their species.

Maybe make them get slow xp on their own (someone recommended this for the big dragons, which would really help) so that they do eventually get there, but because its a slow system players have plenty of time to prepare for beast attacks.

 

[loki1232]

I agree on the dragon whelps.

 

[Sureshot]

I had a few thoughts about Lizardmen that seemed to have a common solution:
1. Lizardmen in water look odd (they just walk on water, even their panthers)
2. The ease with which Lizardmen travel from land to water and vice versa makes me paranoid of their pillaging abilities (though I can't be sure if they can even pillage)
3. The idea of a boat attacking a Lizardmen seems weird, and it seems more like lizardmen would attack the crew of a boat, not the ship itself.

These things make me feel like these units are flying boats with no cargo space shaped like lizards, so what I was wondering, was if they could either have two images (one swimming, one walking) or being two units that change into one another, and some special rules for transfering from land to water and vice versa, and a "capture" type attack against boats, and possibly being invisible while swimming.

The idea for it being two units:
The land unit that attacks normally (and looks how current ones look), have amphibious assault (so can attack across rivers or from boats without penalty). Has special ability to "destroy" itself to "create" the water unit version of itself in targeted water tile (this creates a unit with 0 movement left).
The water unit (looks like some swimming lizardmen, or a shadowy shape under water) can attack units in water tiles and have a % chance of capturing any boats it defeats. Has an special ability to "destroy" itself to "create" the land unit version of itself in a targetted land square (with 0 movement left). Can't be seen by other units unless in adjacent tile.


Not really sure how the AI would handle it though, the water walking just weirds me out.

 

[Chalid]

Not really sure how the AI would handle it though, the water walking just weirds me out.

Yaer the water walking. Doing it with graphics alone does not work. Changing the Unit when travelinng form Land to water completley screws the AI ... and that is unfortunateley not an easy fix.

So it will have to stay as it is for the time beeing (Drown have the same problem; And we would have really liked an dragon that flyes over the oceans..)

 

[evanb]

Is a level 9-10 warrior adventurer supposed to be able to defeat the red dragon?

 

[Jono]

Is a level 9-10 warrior adventurer supposed to be able to defeat the red dragon?

Adventurer only gives the Hero promotion I believe...

 

[Kael]

Is a level 9-10 warrior adventurer supposed to be able to defeat the red dragon?

We dont really think about whats supposed to be able to be able to beat what. But Acherons power is raised form 14 to 18 in 0.13.

 

[Ploeperpengel]

We dont really think about whats supposed to be able to be able to beat what. But Acherons power is raised form 14 to 18 in 0.13.

I even slayed him with an elven ranger who had two firststrikes. It was awesome to finally find that lizard! never before saw it in game. Sadly the babarian AI only used him to guard a village of the size 4 and that battle was kind of dissapointing. well must have been Legolas I suppose

 

[Silverkiss]

I think Acheron the Read Dragon is immobile, thats why he was guarding a village of size 4. (Which, by the way, should have the Dragons´ Horde wonder.)

 

[Ploeperpengel]

I think Acheron the Read Dragon is immobile, thats why he was guarding a village of size 4. (Which, by the way, should have the Dragons´ Horde wonder.)

Oh didn't know that, thx for mentioning it. Glad I didn't raze the village then

 

[Zuul]

Add more animals, especially from my animal mod. With a better version of each normal animal they could spawn later in game and you have more chances to catch them and make dens in the city (eg lion and cave lion makes same den).

http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?t=157031

 

[Chalid]

ANimals Spawn already throughout the game. The main problem is that often at that time no unknown land is left.
But we are planning additional Animals for Hell and the Wilderness (two concepts scheduled for later releases)

 

[loki1232]

I agree with zuul though, lets kill those siberian tigers!

 

[Ravenshroud]

Noob here. Not sure if anyone mentioned it. Too much to read.

I would like to see SLAAD and GITHYANKI.

SLAAD could be lizardmen advanced units. No idea where Githyanki would go, but would be nice with silver sword when equipment goes in.

Is there a rustmonster animal, that of course casts rust?

 

[Kael]

Noob here. Not sure if anyone mentioned it. Too much to read.

I would like to see SLAAD and GITHYANKI.

SLAAD could be lizardmen advanced units. No idea where Githyanki would go, but would be nice with silver sword when equipment goes in.

Is there a rustmonster animal, that of course casts rust?

I tohught about calling the Chaos Marauder a Slaad but I thought that the reference would be lost on most players and I had no intention of delving into the creation of all the stuff thats goes along with slaads.

The same with the Githyanki. Names are flavor. When we call something an Elf it conjures up a certain vision in your head, it brings its own baggage with it. Sometimes that baggage is good, its cool that most players automatically recognize that the elves are better in forests. They arent surprized that the elves dont have berserkers or gunpowder units, they understand that the fellowship of the leaves should have certain synergies with the elven civ. All that comes with their name.

Vampires weren't as easy. I don't like typical "hollywood" vampires and deviated even further from the mark when we didnt make vampires undead (what!?! No! My monster manual clearly says...). So the question was, what do we gain by calling that unit a vampire? What we gained was the players understanding of what is happening during the feast and feed abilities, the understanding of what spreading vampirism to other units is like and a generel "cool factor" that comes with the vampire name.

Oh what a difference a name makes. So for the Slaad, probably not because I wouldnt do the name justice by detailing the things that make a slaad a slaad. The same for the gith, I wouldn't want to add the name just to have the name in. If I did use it, it would come with the full flavor and some mechanics that supported the gith design. Not that I have any plans to do that.

A rust monster is easy enough though (since the mechanic already exists). If we see a design need to place an animal that gives the rust promotion to melee units that attack it, it may be added. But we would need new art for it and there are other art priorities higher on the list than this.

 

[Ravenshroud]

Is it viable to have units such as farmers and Ranchers that can plant resource crops or start a pig/cow ranch?

Essentially they would go to a place on the map that has the resource they want to plant, such as rice, and pick it up after so many turns and carry it back somewhere else and plant it.

Ranchers would find cows for example, and lead the herd somewhere else.

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I am looking for more things to do each turn early on than just NEXT, NEXT, NEXT.

 

[Kael]

Is it viable to have units such as farmers and Ranchers that can plant resource crops or start a pig/cow ranch?

Essentially they would go to a place on the map that has the resource they want to plant, such as rice, and pick it up after so many turns and carry it back somewhere else and plant it.

Ranchers would find cows for example, and lead the herd somewhere else.

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I am looking for more things to do each turn early on than just NEXT, NEXT, NEXT.

Yeah its possible but it has 2 problems:

1. It would be hards to teach the AI to use well.

2. It detracts from the strategic importance of the land. If this was available players would move their resources to their inner, well defended cities and not be as concerned about their outer cities as much. The battle for city grabs to gain resources wouldn't be as critical as people moved their resources to central points.

 

[Ravenshroud]

I was hoping it would give an alternative to land grabbing. Though it would not work for rivers, mountains, gold, gems, etc. Just for food resources mainly. So that they work more like they work in real agriculture.

If civilizations were stuck planting farms and raising cattle only where they found them, we'd all live in Canada, eh?

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Also upgraded farmers should be able to replicate famers and ranches. These are valid options for real civilizations.

I do see the AI issue of course.