Forest Defence

WarKirby

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I'm seeing a problem with forests.

Elves have a natural 10% forest combat bonus
and woodsman gives a 30% bonus

Thusly combined, they get a 40% attack bonus in forests. From this, the defender's bonus of 25% is deducted

This creates a total bonus of 15% attacking into a forest.


Now.
Combat I, gives a 20% bonus, and when attacking in open ground, the defender has no terrain bonus.

Thusly, a grand total of 20% bonus, with the same number of promotions.

My point?
At present, it makes more sense for elves to cut down forests around their territory, and attack the enemy in open ground. The forests throughout their territory hamper their defensive efforts.

I see this as a fundamental problem.

I intend to remedy it by increasing the Elven forests combat bonus, to 15%. But there's a bigger problem

Ancient forests, give a 50% defence bonus.

Now, a little lore talk.
There has to be a reason for such a high defensive bonus. I see it, as a living, breathing, thinking forests. Filled with treants. Big trees that will swipe at invaders disturbing their slumber. Animals roused from their homes by armored platoons marching through, and fighting back. These things would favor the defenders, who live in harmony with the forest, by punishing the agressors, and thusly, a better defence bonus seems partially justified.

My problem then, is that this defence bonus is given to everyone in an ancient forests tile, which doesn't seem right.

When playing as FoL elves, you're going to have ancient forests all over the place. And the problem is, you need Woodsman 1 & 2, just to overcome the natural defence bonuses ancient forests give to invaders in your territory. They give a higher defence bonus than the strongest Fort level, even. It's like building a fort in every single tile across your empire, then the enemy just waltzes in and uses them against you.


I'd like to open discussion on this issue. do others see it as a problem? What solutions could be done to make it better?

I percieve an "ideal" solution, of sorts. Alas, it is not simple.

To start with, Ancient forests would only have the same defence as normal forests. Perhaps less, even, because of the hostile life within. But units which meet certain qualifications, would gain a farther defence bonus when in them. Perhaps through a promotion similar to Wall Defender.

Units eligible, would have to meet any one of the following conditions
1. Has Fellowship of Leaves unit religion (mostly for disciples of leaves in non FoL nations)
2. Belongs to a civ that has FoL as state religion
3. Has Elven racial promo

The main problem I can see here, though, is that this would require some python I think, which is a bit beyond my knowledge. Also, since ancient forests are a lot more widespread than cities, it might perhaps cause a lot of CPU usage in constant checking. Although, a similar thing has been done with Ghostwalkers in Haunted Lands, so perhaps it's more feasible than I thought.

Point 2 would give an advantage, in that FoL nations would have less issues invading other FoL nations, than civs of other religions would.
===========================

An alternative solution I'm thinking of, one within my modding capabilities, is to reduce the AF defence to 25%, but increase the AF Defence of Woodsman and Elven promos to compensate, so that only those with kinship to nature would recieve Ancient Forest benefits. This doesn't entirely solve the issue though, as the AI has a habit of giving Woodsman to some units, especially recon, but it would solve most of it.

Thoughts, anyone?
 
I absolutely agree in principle with what you're doing.

It should be a given that specialist promotions (Woodsmen, but also the Hills/Cities ones) should be numerically superior to generic combat promotions in their particular terrain/situation.

An alternative solution I'm thinking of, one within my modding capabilities, is to reduce the AF defence to 25%, but increase the AF Defence of Woodsman and Elven promos to compensate, so that only those with kinship to nature would recieve Ancient Forest benefits. This doesn't entirely solve the issue though, as the AI has a habit of giving Woodsman to some units, especially recon, but it would solve most of it.

Thoughts, anyone?

This "alternative" seems entirely sufficient to me, as if the AI or another player gives Woodsmen to their units, then they deserve the benefits as well. They are, after all, giving up the more efficient combat promotions.

Ancient Forest defence and Forest defence are separate? Or do they apply stacked when in an Ancient Forest?

If no - maybe Woodsmen promotions can only affect Forest and AF equally, whereas Elven and Religion: FOL can affect AF in a much better way to represent that particular bond.


Good thinking though!
 
Oh, and... if you do the alternative fix, can you send/link me the modified XML files? I'm about to start a fresh game with Elves for the first time (Fall Further), and I'd like to incorporate this as Ancient Forest spam really appeals to me :-)
 
An alternative solution I'm thinking of, one within my modding capabilities, is to reduce the AF defence to 25%, but increase the AF Defence of Woodsman and Elven promos to compensate, so that only those with kinship to nature would recieve Ancient Forest benefits. This doesn't entirely solve the issue though, as the AI has a habit of giving Woodsman to some units, especially recon, but it would solve most of it.

Thoughts, anyone?

I think that giving the "Elven" promotion +10% attack and defence in woods, and allow Elven archers to get the woodsman promotion , should do the trick for the elves.

I, also, agree that the specialization promotions should be stronger than generic ones on the applicable situations.
 
Units eligible, would have to meet any one of the following conditions
1. Has Fellowship of Leaves unit religion (mostly for disciples of leaves in non FoL nations)
2. Belongs to a civ that has FoL as state religion
3. Has Elven racial promo

Like Sarkyn noted, Forest and Ancient Forest are different, so it should be easy.

I'd reduce Ancient Forest defence to 15% and:

  1. Create a new promotion for Fellowship of Leaves followers. Nature Empathy, +25% defence and attack in ancient forest. Actually, I'm not sure promotions can depend on unit religion, but it's probably only a matter of time until xienwolf implements that.
  2. An auto-acquired promotion for Fellowship of Leaves as state religion. +35% defence in Ancient Forest. Restores the current defence, but only for hippies. +15% attack in Ancient Forest. Leaving Ancient Forest doesn't hurt, unless you are invaded by other tree-huggers.
  3. Elves get +10% defence in Ancient Forest, on top of the current bonus. They aren't worse off in Ancient Forest than regular ones, unlike other races.

Possibly add a few promotions, Esus-style, to Fellowship of Leaves. Nowhere near as powerful though, probably like Shock, Cover and Formation; only for forests.

It would be nice for all religions to have a few specific promotions, to increase lock-in.

I realize this doesn't make leaving Forests around for your enemy to use a better idea, but it shouldn't.
 
Playing Devils advocate...

I understand the particular piece you are looking at, but take a step back and look at that race as a whole and I don't have a problem with the current set up odds wise. Mainly because, the elves one of the easiest races to win the game with. They have some many OTHER advantages I think they really don't need any boost to make them MORE powerful.

Human attackers already tend to slash and burn their way into elven areas because they don't want to fight in those same forests you are giving elves a disadvantage.
 
I believe promotions can be tied to religion, since the Esus promotions do.
 
And if the Svartalfar invade the Ljosalfar territory, who will get the defensive bonus? They are both elves after all...
 
Actually, I don't know from first hand. Everything I've read about it suggests state religion only.

Looking at the XML, suggests that some require Esus as unit religion, but all require Esus as state religion.

And if the Svartalfar invade the Ljosalfar territory, who will get the defensive bonus? They are both elves after all...

Usually the defending unit gets the defensive bonus. Hence the name.
 
I mean, if a Svartalfar unit is in the Ljosalfar territory, on an Ancient Forest tile, will it get the defensive bonus?
 
How about just having Woodsman ignore the defensive bonuses of all forests, ancient and otherwise? That would negate the problem, and it's something that the Elves should be taking anyway.
 
How about just having Woodsman ignore the defensive bonuses of all forests, ancient and otherwise? That would negate the problem, and it's something that the Elves should be taking anyway.

There is still the issue with elven archers not getting woodsman.
 
I fixed archers not getting woodsman myself anyway. I just enabled that promotion for archery units, period. Couldn't get the team to agree with that change, so it seems they just went for elves only.

What I'm currently thinking of for Ancient Forests

15% defence normally (less than normal forest, due to hostile animals)
Elven promotion gets an extra 20% Ancient Forest defence (on top of the current 10%, making it 30%)
Woodsman promotion gets an extra 15% Ancient Forest Defence (on top of the current 30%, making it +55% in total)

This means that an Elf with Woodsman promotion will see zero change in ancient forest defence for themselves, but all other cases will have some reduction in the allowed defensive bonus.


At present
Normal unit in AF = 50% bonus
Elf in AF = 60% bonus
Normal unit with Woodsman in AF = 80% bonus
Elf with Woodsman in AF = 90% bonus

With my changes
Normal unit in AF = 15% bonus
Elf in AF = 45% bonus
Normal unit with Woodsman in AF = 70% bonus
Elf with Woodsman in AF = 90% bonus


Essentially, in the highest possible case, nothing is changed. But it will overall make Ancient Forests less useful on defence, for anyone else

I will implement this, and release the change in the next version of my little xml tweaks
 
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