I would have thought that they would be better at hunting and fishing because they "are at one" with the environment. Or maybe they should cause the resource placement option to happen more often. So they are more likely to get a dear resource instead of capturing the unit. They probably should get more
and
from a kill.
Hydro said:
Hmm. That's hard to decide since there are different types of environmentalists. You have ones that want to seek balance within nature, while there are other more extreme ones that think killing anything is bad. I just through maybe the later could be applied since Hunter-Gatherer trait would be the Pro-Hunter and Environmentalist trait would be the Anti-Hunter. Since many of the new traits have pro/anti themes.
DH said:
Environmentalist only makes sense in the modern era anyway, when humans start to destroy the environment because there are too many of them (just like every other plant and animal does when there are too many of them).
Hmm... good points. I would've wanted to name the Environmentalist differently actually, considering that this also includes native culture leaders that would want to walk in harmony with the Earth. And in those cases, as opposed to the modern ideal of 'Environmentalism' you'd use more of each kill quite thoroughly. So there may be cause for two separate ideas here. But as we can see from later quotes here, SgtSlick is already resistant to new trait concepts at all. What I'd need to do is find two differing terms to encapsulate those both and to really identify other core differences. The Environmental trait was designed around the basic idea of reducing pollution. The Hunting concept being introduced here may indeed require a split to encapsulate the two ideals.
EDIT: Maybe 'Naturalist' should be the term for that trait... leave 'Environmentalist' as a more advanced trait concept that wouldn't come into play, as you say, until later in the game. And considering 'Naturalist' makes me think THAT trait should gain some greater likelihood, as you suggest, for animals to become herds when defeated. Or for Capture. I could also see a Hunter trait that gains more benefit from hunting kills and slaughters and increases chance of subdual. I might write up some suggestions on these new ideas but I want to see where we're actually officially headed here with things first.
DH said:
These should not be difficult to do if the Outcome System has the expressions system in it. Which I think it does. Great more work for me - and it is very time consuming - I haven't yet changed the increase in
and
from kills based on the techs
.
Adding a % increase to the chance to subdue an animal by trait should be easy almost trivial to do. Changes to chance to kill is done via a promotion I expect. Chance to make a resource is a bit more time consuming but can also bee done using outcome results on the unit XML.
I was wondering about that... if that could be done from that end. The conditions on those would have to check against the PLAYER traits not the leader traits, to be clear. And it'd take a bit of dll work for the display issue so that it shows properly on the traits display.
Otherwise, very cool to know we have the potential here. On a promo? Hmm... now THAT's a good way to go about it that gets around the concern of having to develop added display lines for the traits display!
Sorry DH. I thought maybe it would just give a better Attack vs Animal units or something. Did not mean to give you more work.
Well... before he's got any work to do there we need to determine how said abilities would measure up to other abilities traits may have, how we want to establish those values on traits that already exist, and aforementioned display work. Nevertheless, its something to consider.
The values you have given out are all just subjective interpretations of what the 'value' of such a thing is. For example, 5% of population given as 'free' units (maintenance free) you have given 1 point. Happiness per military unit in city you've given 1 point, distance maintenance modifier you give 1 point per 20%. These are super powerful compared to say, trade routes which you give 4 points per each free trade route. Thus, the balance is intrinsically flawed. There is no way that 80% distance modifier or 20% of population as free units is the same/equivalent in terms of balance as 1 extra trade route.
That's not to say I don't dislike the concept, but I don't think its all that practical, in other words - I think its pretty much impossible to give them a numeric value. Its better to just balance them all individually.
I expected some tweaks to the valuing system would be one of the first points to debate and smooth over. I realize what it cannot do is encapsulate the value of particular combinations, aka: Trade Routes being more valuable when you have bonuses to Trade Revenues. But considering that traits tend to play into themselves anyhow that element can be an assumed acceptable degree of variation.
But the actual values established are fairly arbitrary at this point. And I'm not entirely sure I can agree that the revenue one would get from even one added trade route in a given city would not roughly be the same as what you would gain from an 80% reduction in # of city upkeep but I get your point. It needs some more careful evaluation, then reconsideration on the trait established values thereafter. For the most part, this is meant to be an
initial proposal and the valuation system is certainly subject to some tweaking itself.
So what I'd ask from you, and anyone else taking a close look, is to counterpropose on the valuation system. Comb through and tweak it according to what YOU think the values should be. (I really liked the spreadsheet Koshling used for setting up our game and I may try to write up the current valuation there so we can track our suggested tweaks individually and maybe between us, we can somewhat average those valuations to get a more appropriate approach.)
Also I don't like how the values are all the same for all the traits - so that it 'fits' into your numerical valuing system. The traits have more 'flavour' and individualism when they aren't so uniformed. It may seem like your way of divvying out the values would result in more 'balance' but I don't agree.
Aside from the mentions above, giving some consideration to the possibility that some Yields or Commerces may not be truly equal to each other (research may still outweigh gold, espionage and culture), it is NOT so that they fit into the numeric system that I suggested them be nearly identical. It is so that it makes sense to a player at a glance. Otherwise, without
establishing the valuation difference between said Yields and Commerces, it just appears haphazard and random to do otherwise and trait layouts that do so are sort of offensive to my sense of beauty in symmetry. The traits are unique in that they represent differing strategies in the game... they don't have to be so unique that the values of each cannot be mostly inferred from those similar but along different lines (such as the comparison between Industrious and Aggricultural.)
All your new traits are unnecessary in my opinion, i'd prefer we concentrated on incorporating a lot of your ideas into the leader 'leveling system'. I definitely dont' want to introduce any new/different traits unless there were more tags to make them actually 'defineable'. I'm not trying to say I don't like your 'overall suggestion' or anything like that, but I certainly am not intending to just rip out the current system and start from scratch with this write up. Many of your ideas I will incorporate straight away, such as of the modifier changes and what not.
Think of it this way, you propose having 54 traits, and then to have levels for each of the 54! No way known I want to do that. I want to cut back on the traits we have now, like I explained to you in that pm I sent you. Cut back but add in layers or tiers with your levelling system.
Can't say I didn't expect you to say that. One thing you should understand here is about Negative traits. THOSE aren't intended to be further developed out. In many ways, they can be considered their positive counterpart's '-1' stage. So although we have 54 traits, we don't have 54 traits that will expand... that only applies to the positive ones.
I've got a second post to make here to back up and explain the reasons for the new traits and structures as proposed. Something to hold against the statement "new traits aren't necessary". See next post to come.
- The military instructor specialist does not work, as in you can't use it, i've tried, by the way.
Do you mean that manipulators on that specialist don't work or that the minor military instructor can't be assigned in a city? I know about the latter... the Minor military instructor is a result of settling captured commander units. As for manipulators on those... they should work the same as on any other specialist unless we have some kind of coding issue that needs to be sorted out regarding settled specialists.
Having now used your levelling system, I see where you were going and how its basically geared to fit your proposal and not what we have currently. I thought it would be that the features of the traits evolved through the levelling system, like industrious I, II, III. Not that the leader just gets a whole new trait - which currently means you can have 5 traits mid game with the current system. It needs to be adjusted, or the traits need to be adjusted.
Maybe you want to simply implement your 'entire plan', it might be better since ultimately I feel I kinda wasted my time a little bit trying to make all those changes with the new tags to see now it doesn't really even matter since it doesn't really 'fit'.
Again... I knew you might feel that way and please try to see things from a more positive perspective. YOU had the insight to ask for those traits tags in the first place. I'VE been pinging off of YOUR ideas so nothing you've done is a waste here (even if you accept my proposals).
The Leader Leveling system should allow one to
either widen their traits selections
OR strengthen the traits they have with additional layers that continue to tear down the negatives those traits start with as well as strengthen the positives from them (though not at quite the same strength as you get from initially getting a new trait - I was thinking something along the lines of a value balance point of 0 impure and 20 pure (less bonus but no penalties for additional steps up.))
Thing is, if you make it so that leader traits don't have penalties but grow into them as your leader advances, you:
a) take away some of the feeling of reward for advancement
and
b) limit the selections to purely better versions of what you started with. This strips out so many layers of potential strategy decisions that it'd be tragic, imo, to go this way.
But as stated, perhaps to ease up on the difficulties leaders have in the beginning of the game, especially under some of the negatives proposed here, perhaps negatives should be withheld until some specified point (like perhaps the first trait choice - they're there all along but aren't active until the first trait is selected, which COULD be the choice to remove the negative and simply keep pressing onward with no net traits...) I'm still mulling this over cuz I know its going to make some starts pretty horrifically difficult.
@Thunderbrd:
Could you please try and fix the bugs with the Pure Traits gameoption? It is not working with Properties, and for some reason it makes you only get positive things on Negative Traits
(or at least for Megalomaniac, I haven't looked at all of the others in great detail).
Where its not working with properties is an XML flaw (I can go through those again and make sure they're set right if Slick doesn't mind) and if we have an inverse on a negative trait like Megalomaniac, I'd tend to think Mega simply isn't established properly AS a negative trait. But if both of the above issues are not the culprit, then perhaps there is indeed something on the coding level to look into. I'll keep testing but so far my games are showing everything working right that I've looked into so far.
