Feedback: Promotions

[Xyth]

There was an experimental change in 0.9.5 that wasn't meant to be released but was. It changed the rate at which units earn promotions. There's been some feedback in favour of it and some against so I thought I'd bring it all together in this new thread and see if there's some middle ground.

Firstly, feedback against:

I am not sure what prompted the change so that promotions are now at 5, 10, 15, etc.

On just the first promotion, I do not like the change.

Barracks no longer is enough to provide a promotion, by itself.
Yes you can get a promotion with the addition of a military instructor or the right civic.
(Stables add for mounted units.)

Thus early on, all of your units are unpromoted.
Yes those with 4 experience are likely to get a promotion if they survive their first battle.
However, you have reduced the power of the barracks greatly.
At the same time those traits that provide free promotions and special units are relatively stronger.

I thought the barracks was meant to simulate the difference between well trained troops and less trained troops. Now there is no visible difference when they meet in their first battle. (In addition, you had battle-tested troops, etc.)

No final opinion yet on having further promotions spaced an equal distance apart, rather than an increasing distance apart. However, this change also does not have the right feel to me.

Another thing I don't like about the XP system, having just started a game...

I used to be able to have scouts, by intelligent positioning, fight wild animals and get useful promotions- especially Woodsman II, which makes them far more effective. Now they need 10 XP to get there, which takes an impractical number of fights.

All in all, the effect of the new change is to make it very difficult to make good use of promotions in an army. Only a tiny core of elite troops can have more than one or maybe two promotions through combat experience, which unbalances a whole range of strategies relating to war by making high-level promotions trickier to access, and stopping warlike civilizations from building double and triple-promoted units by use of various experience-granting methods.

And secondly, feedback in favour:

You know, I think you shouldn't revert the promotion stuff. Actually your mod is the first one I play where promotions make sense. Normally, in particular at higher levels, I don't mind about promotions, your units get promoted and so the AI's, but in the end the war is a question of quantity not quality. Having some powerful units (real veterans!), instead, gave me a possibility to manage the military production in a new and different way: I could really choose what units I wanted to produce and why. Despite one of the "tips" in the loading window of BTS, I really find useless to analyze the units of my opponents and I always build the stronger offensive units and, sometimes, the stronger defensive units. But with your easy promotions, becomes very important to choose wisely the units to build.

Also having very strong units makes their update more palatable. In fact, in particular at medium-high levels, I prefer to build new units and keep the money in my pockets (which I can spend, for example, to rush a building, something that gives you more advantage than a unit update).

Clearly there are issues early, with the Barracks and the higher threshold of the first promotion making it very difficult for units like scouts and non-warships to earn promotions. These are potentially fixable though; for example, the Barracks could give more xp than it currently does. What issues arise later on?

I've not got a firm opinion either way yet. I like the idea of encouraging quality of troops along side quantity but I also don't want to needlessly unbalanced something that works well. Your thoughts and ideas are welcome. What are the best aspects of both approaches and can we combine them in some form?

 

[Simon_Jester]

Well, Xyth, consider how long it takes for units to get higher-level promotions faster under a 5/promotion system

Promotion 1: 2 XP now, 5 XP with the change
Promotion 2: 5 XP now, 10 XP with the change
Promotion 3: 10 XP now, 15 with the change
Promotion 4: 17 XP now, 20 with the change
Promotion 5: 26 XP now, 25 with the change

So basically, you're making promotions more accessible at Level 6 and up, and less accessible at Level 5 and below. This promotes the creation of a relative handful of 'super-units,' preferably Warlorded units with the Leadership promotion, at the expense of the XP level of the rest of the army, for which it will be hard to get more than one tier of promotion without doing very strange things.

I don't see the advantage of this. Quantity of troops is governed by industrial productivity and has effectively nothing to do with the XP the troops gain (since most XP-granting methods like Great Instructors or Barracks don't have much of an opportunity cost in industrial output). Quality of a newly created army is governed by the number of XP you can grant versus the cost of promotions; quality of an old veteran army will be affected by the experience of units that have fought many battles and may achieve very high level (6 and up).

The 5/promotion method is only helpful for those old veteran units with 25+ XP. For all lesser units, you'd just be arbitrarily imposing higher XP costs for promotions, and forcing yourself to grant more XP from things like barracks and civics to compensate if you don't want to disrupt game styles (say, by making it impossible to give newly built units Medic I, Shock, or Cover promotions before they go into battle)

I think you would do better keeping it as it is.

 

[Xyth]

Is it worth then devising a system that ramps up as it does in BTS but also eventually 'caps' at a flat amount per level after a certain number of promotions. Combining what seems to be the best parts of each system?

 

[Simon_Jester]

Well, the argument in favor of a flat cap is that it lets your units stack up six, seven, or more promotions more quickly. So the real question is: is this an improvement to the game? Are we better off with the cap in place, and with, say, a flat 7 XP per promotion after the level 4 promotion kicks in at 10 XP?

I don't feel like I should be the one to answer that question.

One thing I know is that it's always going to be an area where human players have an advantage over the computer, since the computer treats all units as about equally expendable, whereas a human player can and will husband their best units carefully to avoid losing them

 

[Caesar Augustus]

After some thought I've decided I definitely prefer the old way. I think it's better, for gameplay purposes, that units can be built quickly with the necessary promotions. It's not so much that I want units to be killing machines upon their construction, but I do want the ability to specialize them as necessary. As it currently stands, specializing my units requires at least Combat I and whatever specialty the unit will have (Cover, Medic, etc.), unless a unit is going to be City Raider, City Garrison, or that sort of thing. So it's necessary, IMO, that producing units with 2 promotions should be relatively easy (a Barracks and either an early-ish Civic or a Military Instructor, for example).

That said, it should be relatively difficult to get units with more than, say 4 promotions. I don't think it's good for gameplay (or realism, for that matter), to have too many super-units running around, at least not without the use of a Great General. Especially since, as Simon_Jester points out, humans have a definite advantage in that regard. Do we really want to arm the player with an elite army core of 7+ promoted units while the AI is unlikely to get his above 3 or 4 promotions? If we want promotions to come more easily, I think it would be better to tweak around the edges (more from buildings, civics, and GGs) than to get rid of the whole scaling system. Just my $.02.

 

[Howard Mahler]

Having played some more with version 0.9.5, my conclusions:
1. Definitely needs to change first promotion level or adjust barracks.
2. Second promotion also takes too long to get.
3. Going back to the older version in total would be better and fine.
4. Flat cap does not have the right feel. It should get harder and harder to get each additional promotion. This is similar to other mechanisms: growth of cities, great person generation, tech levels, great general promotion, etc.

P.S. I have said some of this before.

 

[Simon_Jester]

There's a change-back file for the XP dynamic in here somewhere- you can slot it into your existing HR mod seamlessly; you even keep save compatibility.

 

[Robuzon]

I was just thinking about the Reinforced Hull III promotion's ability and I thought I'd offer a suggestion. I think that the ability to add 1 cargo space is such a cool tactical ability that it should available for more common promotion schemes. Since naval units tend to lead shorter lives and/or fight less battles its rare to make it to promotion tier 4 or 5. This means that if one wishes to add the +1 cargo space they are locked into promotions relevant only to Reefs, and are unlikely to gain any other useful ones.

However, the +1 cargo space is a powerful ability so I would like to keep it on the 3rd promotion tier. So how about introducing a new ability that is only available at tier 3:

Marine Contingent
+1 Cargo Space (Can only carry Gunpowder units)

 

[Xyth]

I was just thinking about the Reinforced Hull III promotion's ability and I thought I'd offer a suggestion. I think that the ability to add 1 cargo space is such a cool tactical ability that it should available for more common promotion schemes. Since naval units tend to lead shorter lives and/or fight less battles its rare to make it to promotion tier 4 or 5. This means that if one wishes to add the +1 cargo space they are locked into promotions relevant only to Reefs, and are unlikely to gain any other useful ones.

However, the +1 cargo space is a powerful ability so I would like to keep it on the 3rd promotion tier. So how about introducing a new ability that is only available at tier 3:

Marine Contingent
+1 Cargo Space (Can only carry Gunpowder units)

It may be worthwhile providing an alternate prerequisite path for this promotion, rather than adding a new one. At some point I need to have a look at how cargo restrictions are handled, as well as a general review of the promotion tree. That's not on the cards for 1.17 but I'll add it to my todo list for the future.

 

[Skidizzle]

...I think that the ability to add 1 cargo space is such a cool tactical ability that it should available for more common promotion schemes...

However, the +1 cargo space is a powerful ability so I would like to keep it on the 3rd promotion tier. So how about introducing a new ability that is only available at tier 3:

Marine Contingent
+1 Cargo Space (Can only carry Gunpowder units)

It may be worthwhile providing an alternate prerequisite path for this promotion, rather than adding a new one. At some point I need to have a look at how cargo restrictions are handled, as well as a general review of the promotion tree. That's not on the cards for 1.17 but I'll add it to my todo list for the future.

Instead of gunpowder units (which would allow any ship to carry a mech infantry, which isn't realistic), how about we give the ship the ability to carry a single UAV? This is currently done on most US navy ships. Even the battleships USS Wisconsin and USS Missouri were outfitted with them during their reactivation for Desert Storm.

 

[Simon_Jester]

I'm not sure you could do that without making every ship able to carry things like jet fighters...

 

[kiwitt]

Any chance you can add this. It is really useful.

Respawn 1: Should be limited to Combat 5 units
Respawn 2: Should be limited to Combat 6 units (i.e. with a leader)

 

[Xyth]

That's not something I'd want available in the main game. I might be able to add it as a 'hidden' promotion you could grant to specific scenario units though.

 

[kiwitt]

That would be good. I gave it to the Russians in my previous scenario, to reflect the large number of reserves they had.

However, you could limit to leaders only. Which would limit it greatly.

 

[Xyth]

Do you need both ranks or just one? Will be much easier to add if its just one; two is doable but requires extra work to hide.

 

[kiwitt]

Could do just 1. And make it a Leader Promotion only in the main game, with no need to hide it. It can manually be added to units via the scenario.

 

[kiwitt]

Have you considered removing "Blitz" as a promotion for naval units. Naval battles were quite rare.

 

[Simon_Jester]

I don't agree with removing it, myself- it greatly nerfs the performance of a technologically superior fleet, which already has enough trouble dealing with enemy navies that love to hide in port.

 

[Eucalyptus]

I can't prove it, but I believe that I have seen the offer of an Amphibious promotion to a Naval unit.

Edit: Wrong! I couldn't see the difference between the `Reefer' 1 (or whatever it's called) and the Amphibious icons.

 

[kiwitt]

I don't agree with removing it, myself- it greatly nerfs the performance of a technologically superior fleet, which already has enough trouble dealing with enemy navies that love to hide in port.

Well if you have a Naval unit with 7 moves it gets 7 attacks - versus - an armoured unit which may have only 3 moves. It seems unrealistic.