Extra/Conditional Unique Units

[Morholt]

That would be really great, BUT, it would be hard to code I believe. Let them come up with the new mercenary system, AND THEN, we can talk about add on's like that. But thats actually a really great idea!

No problem, as soon as we come up with a system that enough people can agree with I can (hopefully) code it myself, the mercenary system is done entirely in Python as far as I can tell. And mercenaries appearing in various places is already supported by the existing code.


How about this: Every unit has a number of provinces it can appear in. So Camel Archers can appear in the Levant and Africa, Cossacks in Ukraine, and Spearmen everywhere. This is the same as in SoI as far as I can tell from the code. Every province will have let's say three names that mercenaries from there can have, maybe mercenaries from Lombardy can be called "Aostan", "Piedmontese", and "Savoyard" for example.

Now, every province contributes one (1) mercenary toward the hireable pool, chosen from the era appropriate units that are allowed for the province. There may be no era appropriate mercenaries avaliable and then the province will not generate a mercenary. Perhaps the chance of a particular type of mercenary being generated is inversely proportional to the number of provinces it can appear in, so that there will be an even spread distribution of mercenary types.

This means that at any given moment there will be ~100 hireable mercenaries. But to hire them you have to have a city in that province. So an average civ will have ~5 mercenaries to choose from at a time, completely dependent on the provinces they control. Once a mercenary is hired a new one will appear in the province after some turns. If a mercenary is fired so that there are two mercenaries from the same province, the one with the lowest value will be removed from the game. Unhired mercenaries will eventually disappear as well to be replaced by new ones.

What this system would accomplish is that there would be a guaranteed even spread of mercenaries over the map, and who you can hire depends on where you expand. An unfairness is that larger empires get more mercenaries to choose from, but even the smaller civs like Genoa can count on getting at least four-five provinces. Portugal might be in trouble though.

You can also choose between regional hiring (hire in any city but only from that province) and national (hire from any province but only in your capital).

Attached is a mock-up of what the mercenary screen would look like.

 

[Opera]

I like it, although I think non-capital hiring should come with an additional hire cost or be only available as a UP for some civilization. Mercenaries only appearing in the capital is a matter of balance so that you actually can't quickly hire defenders for your newly conquered cities, which would only make steamrolling easier.

(Frankly it could actually work very well as a Ottoman UP)

 

[Wessel V1]

Another possibility is that the player is unable to hire a mercenary if none of his cities in that province is out of revolt. As soon as the city stops revolting, the player can hire a mercenary and that mercenary will be sent randomly to a city in the province; a city without riots of course.

 

[Morholt]

I like it, although I think non-capital hiring should come with an additional hire cost or be only available as a UP for some civilization. Mercenaries only appearing in the capital is a matter of balance so that you actually can't quickly hire defenders for your newly conquered cities, which would only make steamrolling easier.

(Frankly it could actually work very well as a Ottoman UP)

Good point about quickly hiring defenders. What if non-capital hiring simply takes longer? Instead of mercenaries appearing the turn after you hire them, maybe there is a two or three turn wait. If you lose the city before they arrive, they go to the capital instead. And you can only non-capital hire one mercenary at a time since each province only supplies one mercenary at a time and non-capital hiring is from the city's province only.

Another possibility is that the player is unable to hire a mercenary if none of his cities in that province is out of revolt. As soon as the city stops revolting, the player can hire a mercenary and that mercenary will be sent randomly to a city in the province; a city without riots of course.

Good idea, mercenaries should only be hireable to non-capital cities that are not rioting.

One good thing about being able to choose the city mercenaries are hired to is that it opens the possibility of naval mercenaries if we ever want to put that in. I'm not sure about the historicity of this though, warships were extremely expensive and had fairly short service life and I don't know how common it was for governments to lease ships instead of building them.

 

[Opera]

Two or three turn of wait is still too short IMO. It still gives you possibly heavily promoted reinforcement in three turns while usually you'd have to wait to train or bring one yourself (thus possibly putting it in danger of getting killed on the way there).

Although not in revolting cities is good could be a good constraint... I'm still not convinced about hiring in non-capital cities.

 

[Morholt]

It's certainly still up for discussion. How do you feel about the mercenary supply being province bound?

 

[The Turk]

Another possibility is that the player is unable to hire a mercenary if none of his cities in that province is out of revolt. As soon as the city stops revolting, the player can hire a mercenary and that mercenary will be sent randomly to a city in the province; a city without riots of course.

If anything if your people were rioting, that would BE the time, to hire mercenaries, I don't think it should have anything to do with that.


Also, I think we are over complicating this a bit, there is no need for delays to get mercenaries in another city, just have them spawn in your capital, or in the biggest city in a province (or a random city).

As for the spearmen, yes they would be available in many places, but under different names. For example if you control Britain, you could hire Welsh Archers vs in the Levant where you can hire Turcmon archer (for example). The only difference being, their art (the Welsh Archer would look Welsh and the Turcmon archer would like Turkish), therefore you essentially have the same unit but different name and art style. This is how Embryodead did it, and it was VERY successful. In the past I never used mercenaries (I still don't in RFC & RFC Europe), until I started to play SoI. Now whenever I play I ALWAYS buy mercenaries, because their also a lot cheaper, and therefore you are encouraged to buy mercenaries. You should also drop the price and maintenance cost of mercenaries to encourage it, as mercenaries were rife in Medieval Europe. Before standing professional armies, it was mercenaries and levies, that Kings would rely on.

 

[3Miro]

I should rewrite the entire mercenary module. Both Rhye and Edead use much newer versions of the mod, which itself has been rewritten. I will take most of Edead's ideas, but I will add my own twists, of course.

I don't know about the graphics of the whole thing. I am worried that we are getting a bit too heavy on the graphics side.

Names are easy to do.

 

[Opera]

The Turk, I'm sorry but you seem to completely forgo the balance side of features. If you can recruit mercenaries in revolting cities, then it means you can easily defend your conquests while keeping your army going.

@Morholt: I don't know about that, no real opinion. Seems unfair but I'm not sure how it works currently anyway.

 

[The Turk]

I should rewrite the entire mercenary module. Both Rhye and Edead use much newer versions of the mod, which itself has been rewritten. I will take most of Edead's ideas, but I will add my own twists, of course.

I don't know about the graphics of the whole thing. I am worried that we are getting a bit too heavy on the graphics side.

Names are easy to do.

I think rewriting it would be a good idea!

As for the graphics, it would not be hard, since you already have most of them there. For example Welsh Archer, just use the Welsh barb texture, as for Muslim Archers (mercs in Sicily), you can use the Arabian/Cordoban archer texture. Sure I recommend you add a couple more textures and units like the Varangian Guard and Cossacks, but other then that your already set.

And yes I hope naming should be easy

Also I would recommend dropping the starting price and maintenance cost of mercs as to encourage the player and the AI to hire more of them. This is of course only when you finish changing the mercenary dynamics. And please take out "Hiring out" units, its the most unrealistic part of RFC, and I would hate for it to be still included here :/

The Turk, I'm sorry but you seem to completely forgo the balance side of features. If you can recruit mercenaries in revolting cities, then it means you can easily defend your conquests while keeping your army going.

That is why I believe you should only be able to hire mercs in your capital, otherwise it begins to get kind of unfair. So can we please just stick to mercs spawning in your capital, to avoid any unfair advantages.

 

[AbsintheRed]

I should rewrite the entire mercenary module. Both Rhye and Edead use much newer versions of the mod, which itself has been rewritten. I will take most of Edead's ideas, but I will add my own twists, of course.

Great, I also planned that!
(at least to improve everything I can)
We can get back on this ~2 weeks from now

I don't know about the graphics of the whole thing. I am worried that we are getting a bit too heavy on the graphics side.

I prefer to add as much ethnic art and flavour as we can find, most of the players computers can handle high graphics.
After all, 5 years have passed since the release of CIV, everything greatly improved

Also, I already promised to make a computer friendly version of the mod too, where replacing all the LHs and units with vanilla BtS art

 

[The Turk]

i prefer to add as much ethnic art and flavour as we can find, most of the players computers can handle high graphics.
After all, 5 years have passed since the release of civ, everything greatly improved

awesome!

 

[ezzlar]

Well, certainly not cheaper mercs. Armies in this mod are too cheap. Each civ can have huge armies without economy sagging a bit.

I would say we need a general huge increase in maintenance of armies. Low productivity in the economy put a heavy burden on a war ridden civ since it took the work of so many to supply one unit.

 

[AbsintheRed]

I would say we need a general huge increase in maintenance of armies. Low productivity in the economy put a heavy burden on a war ridden civ since it took the work of so many to supply one unit.

Agreed, that's the direction I prefer
Base the mercenary units price mostly on their strenght, not the number of promotions they have, and generally increase the cost.

Something like light cavalry line starts increasing from 5 gold, heavy cavalry form 6, archers and polearm from 4, etc
First draft: Archer 4, Crossbowman 5, Arbalestier 6, Longbowman 7
Spearman 4, Guisarmier 6, Pikeman 8
Lancer 6, Armored Lancer 8, Knight 10
etc...
Every promotion would increase the cost by half gold (or rather every 2 promotions by one gold)

 

[The Turk]

Agreed, that's the direction I prefer
Base the mercenary units price mostly on their strenght, not the number of promotions they have, and generally increase the cost.

Something like light cavalry line starts increasing from 5 gold, heavy cavalry form 6, archers and polearm from 4, etc
First draft: Archer 4, Crossbowman 5, Arbalestier 6, Longbowman 7
Spearman 4, Guisarmier 6, Pikeman 8
Lancer 6, Armored Lancer 8, Knight 10
etc...
Every promotion would increase the cost by half gold (or rather every 2 promotions by one gold)

Whatever you want, I'm just warning you that it would suck if you spend so my time reworking the mercs, but no one ends up using them. I agree that perhaps non-mercenary units should be more expensive to hold in to (the player should feel the need to disband unit more often) up until you reach the early modern era with professional standing armies, then the price for a unit should go down.

Finally I'd suggest adding the influence driven war. You may say that it slows down the game; but it's worked thus far very well in SoI so it would be a good idea to include it.

TL;DR:
1. Make Mercs cheaper
2. Make Dark Age/Medieval regular trained units more expensive to upkeep
3. With Nationalsim remove Mercs, and drop the price of regular units.
4. Add influence driven war (also it'll act as the devastation war brings)

 

[AbsintheRed]

Whatever you want, I'm just warning you that it would suck if you spend so my time reworking the mercs, but no one ends up using them. I agree that perhaps non-mercenary units should be more expensive to hold in to (the player should feel the need to disband unit more often) up until you reach the early modern era with professional standing armies, then the price for a unit should go down.

Finally I'd suggest adding the influence driven war. You may say that it slows down the game; but it's worked thus far very well in SoI so it would be a good idea to include it.

TL;DR:
1. Make Mercs cheaper
2. Make Dark Age/Medieval regular trained units more expensive to upkeep
3. With Nationalsim remove Mercs, and drop the price of regular units.
4. Add influence driven war (also it'll act as the devastation war brings)

What are you talking about??
That's the price of mercenaries in my last post, not base units...

Just think again: Training regular units costs many hammers, while you can hire mercenaries for a low price
Yet you really want to make regular units cost more than mercenaries (per turn)?

So in a few words: no, we won't go in that direction you planned

The merc system:
1. Make mercenary upkeeping more expensive. They hiring price can stay
2. Increase the productions costs (hammers) for regular units, while the upkeep stays fairly low
(or generally reduce the prodution cities have)
3. Implement the good ideas from SoI and from the last few pages of this thread
I especially liked some of Morholt's ideas

 

[Opera]

(or generally reduce the prodution cities have)

How would you do that?

 

[AbsintheRed]

Production boosting buildings gives too much bonus

But it's much easier if we increase the general cost of units and/or increase the unit production modifiers for most of the civs

This got out of our hand, especially for the Ottomans and the Swedish
Popping out a Knight or Karolin every turn from most of your cities is just crazy

 

[Opera]

Right. I feel that's how you should do it (through increase of units' cost) because I don't think production-boosting buildings are that good.

How many are there? Blacksmith is good but it also takes a long time to build, so I think the investment requires a good bonus.

Guild Hall probably should only get +2 raw production and not a free Engineer, btw.

You could probably reduce Heroic Epic's production bonus to 50% (from 100%), or even turn it into a "1 free promotion" bonus, maybe change the name too -- it feels more ancient than medieval (same for National Epic) but that may only be me who's biased.

Also, Feudal Law as +20% unit production, I don't think this is required. It should rather enable 1-2 drafting per turn.

 

[The Turk]

Elite units should cost more!

Sorry if my last couple posts were confusing, have been sick and dazzled for the past couple of days

Anyway, I was saying that Elite units such as heavy knights and heavy footmen should cost more then they do currently, and that the player should not mind to have them disbanded.

In general the player should feel the need to disband units more often, for at least the Medieval era, as no European (or Middle Eastern), civ had a standing army 24/7.

As for mercenaries, their price should be decreased, as to encourage the purchase of them. For example merc archers or spearmen or light cavalry should cost less to hire then heavy knights or heavy footmen are to train. I am not pulling this out of my ass, I'm saying this because it worked very well for SoI, due to the fact that now everyone buys mercenaries in that game, while its become the norm for many RFC and RFC Europe players to ignore the feature. If you raise the price of mercenaries too much, the AI and the Human player will not want to purchase them (with maintenance cost), and will then instead just create units.

Do whatever you want, but I'm just telling you, that you might not want to increase the price of everything exponentially too quickly.