Design: Units

[loki1232]

Good point! I suppose he could sacrifice units in his stack to power his abilities? (Yes, I do really fancy the idea of sacrificing weak units for profit. It's wonderfully draconian) Otherwise, if he has a high movement rate, it would not be such an impediment. After all, this unit is superhuman

maybe for his second casting he could cast any divine spell, not just his normal one. A city defended by him would be incredibly hard to capture.

I think the sacrificing in a stack is for the vampires personally.

 

[Corlindale]

Here's some Shade type units:

Do any of you remember the Mind Worms from Alpha Centauri? When fighting mind worms, a completely different system from regular combat was used, called psi combat. For this, the units actual combat strength would be irrelevant - only it's moral counter mattered, because to defeat mind worms it needed to overcome the fear they inspired.
I think it could be nice to have something similar for the shade type units - shades would not fight normally, but instead strive to drive the enemy insane by fear, and then easily kill it. Thus, in combat against shades, even the strongest "raw power" kind of units would succumb, while a weak, but disciplined warrior would prosper.
Civ 4 does not have an actual moral counter, but perhaps a units level could be said to represent how disciplined it is - it would also fit well with heroes being the ones least touched by fear. And of course there could be promotions against shades, as mentioned in the other post.

 

[woodelf]

Mental promotions sound awesome. Saves versus mind control or fear, are they possible in Python?

 

[wilboman]

Mmmm... Mindworms... I loved those slimy little monsters, I kept converting them

 

[Chalid]

This might not be exactly an Unit proposal, but as we can have only three of every kind of national units each of them should be named. At the time the unit is build (or better upgraded) it should get a name based on the building city and an integer.
So the first Shield Wall you upgraded in Athingar would be named Athingards Shieldwall I and so forth. This might not be to complicated to code with phyton but would add some more flavour to the national units and somehow point out that these guys are some kind of special force.

 

[loki1232]

This might not be exactly an Unit proposal, but as we can have only three of every kind of national units each of them should be named. At the time the unit is build (or better upgraded) it should get a name based on the building city and an integer.
So the first Shield Wall you upgraded in Athingar would be named Athingards Shieldwall I and so forth. This might not be to complicated to code with phyton but would add some more flavour to the national units and somehow point out that these guys are some kind of special force.

Ohh. Love this. Maybe also give them a 5% bonus in that city. Not large, but maybe sometimes battle turning. Small enough that the Ai can ignore it without being heavily disadvantaged.

 

[wilboman]

I totally agree. Having actual unit names would be wicked! Although IMHO we should consider doing it to every unit built, if we can.

The tiny home defense bonus would be cool too, but probably harder to do. While we're on stuff that're cool, but hard to do: unit standards, at least for national units.

 

[Kael]

This might not be exactly an Unit proposal, but as we can have only three of every kind of national units each of them should be named. At the time the unit is build (or better upgraded) it should get a name based on the building city and an integer.
So the first Shield Wall you upgraded in Athingar would be named Athingards Shieldwall I and so forth. This might not be to complicated to code with phyton but would add some more flavour to the national units and somehow point out that these guys are some kind of special force.

This isn't to hard to do either on national or all units. Adding the defence bonus isn't to hard, but will require a check in onMove. I tend to be very cautious about this, because it isn't a big deal for other mods to add a few checks in these functions, totaled they aren't much. But FfH is so big that we have to be more careful about our processor use because even though you cant feel 10-20 additional checks in common functions, once you get up to a few hundred it becomes noticable.

So I guess my instinct is that adding the names is cool. Although I like the idea of the home city bonus, I dont think its worth the cpu usage. What do you guys think?

I tend to agree with chalid that even though this would be cool on all units, it gives a nice special touch to the National Units that makes me want to reserve it just for them.

 

[Lunargent]

The only two ghost like units currently speced in phase 2 are Ghost Children, which are the souls of children that have been sacrificed to Mammon, and exist on the Hell map. The other is the Wraith unit which is created by a necromancy spell.

I like the idea to have ghosts haunt an area and the possess ability. We hadn't considered either of those options. Let me think about it.

I think another good use for ghosts would be with my modified apocalypse idea. Defeated units would come back as ghosts or specters to fight the last war.

 

[Kael]

Okay, big question. Should a racial unit be its race type or its unit type? So would an Elven Ranger be an elf or a ranger? Is a Dwarven Crossbowman a Dwarf or an archer?

And yes, both would be cool, but right now its either/or.

 

[Kael]

I think another good use for ghosts would be with my modified apocalypse idea. Defeated units would come back as ghosts or specters to fight the last war.

Thats what Knell of Darkness is supposed to do if I can ever get it to work.

 

[woodelf]

Okay, big question. Should a racial unit be its race type or its unit type? So would an Elven Ranger be an elf or a ranger? Is a Dwarven Crossbowman a Dwarf or an archer?

And yes, both would be cool, but right now its either/or.

I vote Racial, but I can see where that's going to leave the glass half empty in other aspects.

How hard would it be to add new classes or unit types that took all of those combos into account? So UNITCOMBAT_ELFRANGER would be different than an UNITCOMBAT_ELFSWORDSMAN. Lots of work, but they would be different.

 

[loki1232]

The only two ghost like units currently speced in phase 2 are Ghost Children, which are the souls of children that have been sacrificed to Mammon, and exist on the Hell map. The other is the Wraith unit which is created by a necromancy spell.

I like the idea to have ghosts haunt an area and the possess ability. We hadn't considered either of those options. Let me think about it.

You see, this is where your mod making idealogy has a problem. Instead of taking away a potentially cool unit type, we should simply has in enough spirits/shades to make it work.

 

[loki1232]

I vote Racial, but I can see where that's going to leave the glass half empty in other aspects.

How hard would it be to add new classes or unit types that took all of those combos into account? So UNITCOMBAT_ELFRANGER would be different than an UNITCOMBAT_ELFSWORDSMAN. Lots of work, but they would be different.

You mean have almost every unit be its own class? (we can add in human slaying promotions)

That would be uber cool.

 

[woodelf]

You mean have almost every unit be its own class? (we can add in human slaying promotions)

That would be uber cool.

Well if by class you mean UNITCOMBAT then yes, I guess that's what I mean. It would be Uber cool to play, but whoever would be doing the XML would be cursing loudly! For every promotion against a race you'd have to add in every unit. Hell, for every COMBAT1, 2, ect you'd have to add in every UNITCOMBAT class. That would be a HUGE XML file by itself, unless there's an easy way to do this that I'm missing. I suppose you could cut/paste the promotions after adding in the UNITCOMBAT values for similar ones. It would, however, remove the problems of choosing "is it an elf or is it a ranger" discussions.

 

[loki1232]

Well if by class you mean UNITCOMBAT then yes, I guess that's what I mean. It would be Uber cool to play, but whoever would be doing the XML would be cursing loudly! For every promotion against a race you'd have to add in every unit. Hell, for every COMBAT1, 2, ect you'd have to add in every UNITCOMBAT class. That would be a HUGE XML file by itself, unless there's an easy way to do this that I'm missing. I suppose you could cut/paste the promotions after adding in the UNITCOMBAT values for similar ones. It would, however, remove the problems of choosing "is it an elf or is it a ranger" discussions.

Combat I,II you wouldn't have to add in every race, you'd just have to say +20% strength in general. It removes the disscusssions as you say.
It wouldn't really be too hard if you can copy/paste. First you write up a list of elven units, then you add unitcombat in front of them, and whenever you need to give promotions against elven units you just copy that list in. You would also do a list like this for archers, which would include elven archers. You copy that list in for each anti-archer promotion.

Edit: If anyone can tell me how, I'd be willing to do some of the XML.

 

[woodelf]

Combat I,II you wouldn't have to add in every race, you'd just have to say +20% strength in general. It removes the disscusssions as you say.
It wouldn't really be too hard if you can copy/paste. First you write up a list of elven units, then you add unitcombat in front of them, and whenever you need to give promotions against elven units you just copy that list in. You would also do a list like this for archers, which would include elven archers. You copy that list in for each anti-archer promotion.

Edit: If anyone can tell me how, I'd be willing to do some of the XML.

I've done plenty of XML and can actually do that at light times at work. With XML Marker, which I had never used before, it's easy as pie.

If everyone things this massive undertaking worth doing I'd take a crack at some of it. That's a lot of UNITCOMBAT, but a lot more specialized gameplay which would be great!

 

[Kael]

Well if by class you mean UNITCOMBAT then yes, I guess that's what I mean. It would be Uber cool to play, but whoever would be doing the XML would be cursing loudly! For every promotion against a race you'd have to add in every unit. Hell, for every COMBAT1, 2, ect you'd have to add in every UNITCOMBAT class. That would be a HUGE XML file by itself, unless there's an easy way to do this that I'm missing. I suppose you could cut/paste the promotions after adding in the UNITCOMBAT values for similar ones. It would, however, remove the problems of choosing "is it an elf or is it a ranger" discussions.

It would offer a lot of granular control but include so many unitcombats that it would be unmanageable. The biggest problem would be in being unable to give bonus's against classes of units since effectivly classes of units wouldn't work anymore (nevermind what it would do to my python functions that make sure the unit is a valid unitcombat before actions are taken).

Unitcombats are groups of units, Unitclass is a specific unit, Unittype is a flavor of that that unitclass (no two unittypes share a unitclass in phase 1 but they will in phase 2).

Im leaning toward making an elven horseman an elf too (precident was set with the elven archers anyway). What that means is that almost the entire elven civs units will be vulnerable to the same promotion. Making Elf Slaying and Dwarf Slaying very useful. Not that thats a bad thing, I see it as a nice weakness for those civs, they just dont have the diversity that human civs do, which is fitting.

 

[woodelf]

Too bad there is no easy way to combo classes then. Will even the SDK make this possible or is it just too Grande of a scheme?

 

[Kael]

Too bad there is no easy way to combo classes then. Will even the SDK make this possible or is it just too Grande of a scheme?

Its possible but you would have to change all the checks for unitcombats to go look for more values. There is an inherent difference in the way you deal with a single and multivalued attributes from a database perspective. It probably isn't worth the work it would take to make this possible.