G&K Combat Speculation Mod

[Monthar]

For those who want to try out combat with 100 hit-point units and a speculated 4x increase in damage (approx 20% of max health when equal strength melee units attack each other), I've uploaded a mod to do that in the Modpacks forum.

More details listed in the Modpacks thread found here.
Gods & Kings Combat Mod

 

[Insanity_X]

What are the conditions required for a spearman to take out a tank? How far removed from a normal situation are those conditions?

 

[Monthar]

I didn't adjust balance between units at all, but a tank should be able to kill the spearman in one hit no matter which is the attacker.

 

[Moriboe]

From this article: "The new system allows your lines to stand longer than they could before, so you, as a player, can make smarter tactical decisions without worrying about a single unlucky roll of the dice."

Now I'm always suspicious about any point being overly stressed. Which player has substantial problems keeping units alive? Exactly: the AI. Increasing unit hit points will allow it a better chance at achieving its goals without being wiped out on the spot, in what to the human seems like a mindless suicide attack.
Sounds like this system will also make big attack waves (blanket of death) less viable or needed. Units could be more expensive to reduce cluttering. Higher difficulties could even increase AI hit points (they are redoing it after all); damage would be calculated based on percentage and is not influenced. Making AI units stronger would not be fun to play against, but how do you feel about units that just take longer to kill?

On the downside, I'm already fearing how this would be an inferior alternative to better programming

 

[Monthar]

They'd have to do some serious reprogramming to allow the AI's units to have different HP, damages and/or strengths than the Player's units. Hitpoints and damages are global settings and strength is a setting on each unit.

Any any case, this thread was just to present the mod I made that's designed to give us an idea of how much of a difference the increase in hitpoints might be.

 

[Moriboe]

Right, I missed the word "Mod" in the title. Maybe I should create a new topic then.

It would just be different max HP, nothing else has to change.

 

[JaGarLo]

I played a game with your mod. Warfare becomes very interesting with it, and the '' always 1 damage'' rule is not a problem anymore (a crossbowman will have a hard time with a destroyer). Melee units deal a high amount of damage to cities, but they receive a lot of damage too. Ranged units are not that powerful now.

However, I found a problem: if you try to attack an embarked unit with a ranged weapon, it does almost no damage (always 4 dmg, no matter the strength of both sides). Was that in purpose?

 

[MadDjinn]

However, I found a problem: if you try to attack an embarked unit with a ranged weapon, it does almost no damage (always 4 dmg, no matter the strength of both sides). Was that in purpose?

That's vanillas default damage for ranged vs. embarked.

 

[JaGarLo]

That's vanillas default damage for ranged vs. embarked.

Yes, it is, but the thing is that it's 4 damage out of 100 (not 4 out of 10), making impossible to destroy embarked units with ranged units.

If we're to keep the same system, I'd put 20-40 damage instead of only 4.

 

[Monthar]

That's another one of those weird anomalies, that I couldn't figure out. I also couldn't get cities to heal more than 5 points per turn, nor start at 50% health upon capture, no matter how high I set those two settings to.

I'm sure the dev team will have those issues solved when the expansion launches.

 

[Optional]

There were already a couple of mods in the database that cranked up the hitpoints; one that gives units 15 hitpoints and one that gives units 25 hitpoints.
What I'm guessing is that the developers will balance the new hitpoints with the amount of points healed per turn. You can increase 10 hitpoints with any amount you want, but healing more than 1 hitpoint per turn means automatically a doubling at least, as going from 1 to 2 would be that. This may be a reason why they want to go with a big increase in the amount of hitpoints; to balance it with an increase in hitpoints healed per turn.

I'm speculating, of course, but I think the amount of hitpoints healed per turn can't stay the same. Healing already goes very slow with units down to 1 or 2 hitpoints, and will become unacceptably slow when you increase the total amount of hitpoints altogether.

 

[MadDjinn]

Yes, it is, but the thing is that it's 4 damage out of 100 (not 4 out of 10), making impossible to destroy embarked units with ranged units.

If we're to keep the same system, I'd put 20-40 damage instead of only 4.

That's another one of those weird anomalies, that I couldn't figure out. I also couldn't get cities to heal more than 5 points per turn, nor start at 50% health upon capture, no matter how high I set those two settings to.

I'm sure the dev team will have those issues solved when the expansion launches.

this (for JaGarLo).

The combat mechanics are a bit spread out, so it might be hard to 'emulate' what might be in the GaK re: combat damage. It might not all be in the LUA/XML either.

 

[JaGarLo]

this (for JaGarLo).

The combat mechanics are a bit spread out, so it might be hard to 'emulate' what might be in the GaK re: combat damage. It might not all be in the LUA/XML either.

Ok, I understand. I thought it was an overlook or something.

P.S.: However, I disagree on dealing always 40% damage on these situations. But if now embarked units can defend themselves, they receive damage considering both sides' strength, right?

 

[Monthar]

@Optional
In this mod I did crank up the healing per turn by 10x. So units heal just as fast as they do without the mod. However, I only increased the damages they deal by 4x, so instead of two melee units of the same strength dealing about 50% damage when they fight, they only do around 20%.

When playing with the mod I was seeing melee damages around 20-30 and ranged/air strike damages around 15-25. Units were healing 10 when in neutral/enemy, 20 in friendly and 30 in cities, without a medic nearby.

Even if I cranked the "CITY_HIT_POINTS_HEALED_PER_TURN" setting from the default of 2 all the way up to 1000, with the actual hitpoints cranked from the default of 25 to 250, it would only heal 5 per turn.

These lines are all 10x normal

<Update>
<Set Value="100"/>
<Where Name="MAX_HIT_POINTS"/>
</Update>
<Update>
<Set Value="250"/>
<Where Name="MAX_CITY_HIT_POINTS"/>
</Update>
<Update>
<Set Value="20"/>
<Where Name="CITY_HIT_POINTS_HEALED_PER_TURN"/>
</Update>
<Update>
<Set Value="10"/>
<Where Name="ENEMY_HEAL_RATE"/>
</Update>
<Update>
<Set Value="10"/>
<Where Name="NEUTRAL_HEAL_RATE"/>
</Update>
<Update>
<Set Value="20"/>
<Where Name="FRIENDLY_HEAL_RATE"/>
</Update>
<Update>
<Set Value="30"/>
<Where Name="CITY_HEAL_RATE"/>
</Update>

These are all 4x normal

<Update>
<Set Value="1600"/>
<Where Name="ATTACK_SAME_STRENGTH_MIN_DAMAGE"/>
</Update>
<!-- Note: this will actually produce between 0.00 and 15.99 damage -->
<Update>
<Set Value="1600"/>
<Where Name="ATTACK_SAME_STRENGTH_POSSIBLE_EXTRA_DAMAGE"/>
</Update>
<Update>
<Set Value="800"/>
<Where Name="RANGE_ATTACK_SAME_STRENGTH_MIN_DAMAGE"/>
</Update>
<!-- Note: this will actually produce between 0.00 and 15.99 damage -->
<Update>
<Set Value="1600"/>
<Where Name="RANGE_ATTACK_SAME_STRENGTH_POSSIBLE_EXTRA_DAMAGE"/>
</Update>
<Update>
<Set Value="800"/>
<Where Name="AIR_STRIKE_SAME_STRENGTH_MIN_DEFENSE_DAMAGE"/>
</Update>
<!-- Note: this will actually produce between 0.00 and 7.99 damage -->
<Update>>
<Set Value="800"/>
<Where Name="AIR_STRIKE_SAME_STRENGTH_POSSIBLE_EXTRA_DEFENSE_DAMAGE"/>
</Update>
<Update>
<Set Value="1600"/>
<Where Name="INTERCEPTION_SAME_STRENGTH_MIN_DAMAGE"/>
</Update>
<!-- Note: this will actually produce between 0.00 and 11.99 damage -->
<Update>
<Set Value="1200"/>
<Where Name="INTERCEPTION_SAME_STRENGTH_POSSIBLE_EXTRA_DAMAGE"/>
</Update>
<!-- City Combat Defines -->
<Update>
<Set Value="4"/>
<Where Name="MIN_CITY_STRIKE_DAMAGE"/>
</Update>

After uploading the mod I did remove these lines when I discovered that they caused units to be dropped from full health to only about 1 HP when attacking a city even if the city was down to 1 HP.

<Update>
<Set Value="200"/>
<Where Name="CITY_ATTACKING_DAMAGE_MOD"/>
</Update>
<Update>
<Set Value="400"/>
<Where Name="ATTACKING_CITY_MELEE_DAMAGE_MOD"/>
</Update>

I was just scanning through the global defines again and found these lines way above all the damages I adjusted.

<Row Name="NONCOMBAT_UNIT_RANGED_DAMAGE">
<Value>4</Value>
</Row>

I'm gonna try changing these to see if it fixed that embarked damage.

This line indicates, that no matter how many hitpoints a city starts with it should always have half that amount when captured.

<Row Name="CITY_CAPTURE_DAMAGE_PERCENT">
<Value>50</Value>
</Row>

While typing this I noticed there were a few more posts when I hit preview. So I have to agree with MadDjinn's statement here.

The combat mechanics are a bit spread out, so it might be hard to 'emulate' what might be in the GaK re: combat damage. It might not all be in the LUA/XML either.

 

[Monthar]

Ok, I understand. I thought it was an overlook or something.

P.S.: However, I disagree on dealing always 40% damage on these situations. But if now embarked units can defend themselves, they receive damage considering both sides' strength, right?

Most likely, however, I couldn't figure out how to give all units the embarked defense promotion in place of the normal embarked promotion. I looked in every xml and lua file in the gameplay folder.

 

[MadDjinn]

Most likely, however, I couldn't figure out how to give all units the embarked defense promotion in place of the normal embarked promotion. I looked in every xml and lua file in the gameplay folder.

you might have to do it one unit at a time.

I think the units.xml file has a list of 'default' promotions per unit near the bottom (I forget which one at the moment).

best bet (if you have the Spain DLC) is to find the promotion that it gets for embarked defense, then copy it over.

another thought is to see how the Songhai UA is added, then add it to all civs. (seems hacky, but oh well)

 

[Monthar]

I couldn't find where Songhai or any of the other civs actually got their UA.

I suppose I could try that and hope the units don't start with embarked defense before researching optics. I'll try it for v.3.

I've uploaded v.2 to the thread in the mods forum. Gods & Kings Combat Mod

v.2 is now uploaded with the following changes.

• removed some lines that were causing units to take far too much damage when attacking cities.
• Added a line so damage to embarked units is increased from the default of 4 to 40.

I still haven't been able to give the embarked defense promotion to all units in place of the normal embarked promotion.

Know Issues

• Capturing a city does not boost its hitpoints back up to 50% like it should.
• Cities only heal 5 hitpoints per turn. so they can take at least 50 turns to fully heal when captured.