Going for Gold: Promotions

[Bromar1]

March is weird because it is supposed to be a defensive ability but it has a harsh defense malus. The issue really is from the offensive advantage that you get from having more HP than your opponent.

How about coming at it from another angle?

March: Reduce the damage that this unit takes from the first attack each turn by 10 (no defensive malus)

This allows you to move around more safely but without an HP advantage.

@Gazebo is this possible at all?

 

[Gazebo]

March is weird because it is supposed to be a defensive ability but it has a harsh defense malus. The issue really is from the offensive advantage that you get from having more HP than your opponent.

How about coming at it from another angle?

March: Reduce the damage that this unit takes from the first attack each turn by 10 (no defensive malus)

This allows you to move around more safely but without an HP advantage.

@Gazebo is this possible at all?

No.

G

 

[tu_79]

Actually, I like the idea of March giving penalties to attack, instead of defense. It won't be much better than now, but it will make its usefulness more even between melee and mounted.
As melee units, March will give better survivability at the cost of being less useful for attack, which is what we love about meat units. As mounted, they'll lose some punch, but they can retreat and recover faster, so it's still useful.

 

[Stalker0]

I had an idea, not sure if this is doable so check me.

I have mentioned in recent posts that Naval invasions are very difficult, even more so for the AI. Its just very difficult to put your units on another person's shores without them getting ripped to pieces.

So...what if we added this to Amphibious?

"Gain +25% Defense on Coasts"


So the idea is, when your unit lands, its going to take punishment, but units promoted for naval invasions can take a bit more pain, using the water to their advantage. And this means Special Forces and Marine units later game would automatically be better at performing naval invasions.

Thoughts?

So throwing this one back in the ring. I still really like the idea, any support for it?

Hehe I'm sure it doesn't have anything to do with the naval invasion I just did where I lost 20 units in about 3 turns....

 

[Rekk]

I'll support it. I'm even okay with the corner case of coastal plains tiles being better defense than inland tiles for general defensive purposes (sieging a city etc), specifically for Amphibious units. It's worth trying and seeing if it's better than cover for a general defensive melee unit.

A unit on a coastal tile with Cover II and Amphibious is level 5 and has +85% combat strength when defending against ranged units, +35% combat strength when defending against other units, and +10% combat strength when attacking, and may also have other terrain dependent defense bonuses.

 

[Bhawb]

After having played a number of warmonger games back to back, I haven't been able to reproduce the issue with amphibious invasions which makes me really cautious to implement a promotion that could have strong unintended implications. I'm actually worried this could cause the exact opposite of what you're intending because ranged units with +25% defense could stop your invasions far more than having 25% defense once you're on the coast will help.

 

[amateurgamer88]

For March, I was wondering how people think of some variation of the change below. Of course, it also depends on whether or not it can be coded

Unit will heal every turn, even if it performs an action. -15% while defending
+5% additional when adjacent to a friendly unit (not sure if this can be applied for defending only as well)

The idea is that an isolated unit is extremely vulnerable. You support that unit and it has a better chance of survival.

 

[Stalker0]

After having played a number of warmonger games back to back, I haven't been able to reproduce the issue with amphibious invasions which makes me really cautious to implement a promotion that could have strong unintended implications. I'm actually worried this could cause the exact opposite of what you're intending because ranged units with +25% defense could stop your invasions far more than having 25% defense once you're on the coast will help.

With naval support I have never had trouble clearing the beach. The problem is, once your on the beach, your slaughtered by the inland units. The recent game I just mentioned was a great example of this.

I was playing France against India, and tried my hand at a full scale naval invasion. Like I had this sea full of cannons and musketeers with a full authority tree. With frigates and amphibious musketeers, I cleared the beach with little issue. And then I would land 6 units across the beach, and watch them get systematically annihilated.

 

[Rekk]

After having played a number of warmonger games back to back, I haven't been able to reproduce the issue with amphibious invasions which makes me really cautious to implement a promotion that could have strong unintended implications. I'm actually worried this could cause the exact opposite of what you're intending because ranged units with +25% defense could stop your invasions far more than having 25% defense once you're on the coast will help.

Ranged units don't get Amphibious. The defending melee units would need to spend their promotions on Amphibious over more general purpose promotions, which I guess would be optimal if the only threat is by sea? At that point it's back to being a net wash.

 

[pineappledan]

Meh. I have no interest in a bonus for coasts. Amphibious assaults are harder and that’s fine. They don’t need a corrective, especially one which might require the computer to determine a plot’s coastal status by iterating through every adjacent tile every time any unit moves. I think this proposal doesn’t have legs, and would be a harsh performance hit.

Edit: if there’s a way to hook unit position into the same calculation that determines if a worker can build a coastal improvement (eg. Moai), then maybe it’s not a problem

 

[Rekk]

+5% additional when adjacent to a friendly unit (not sure if this can be applied for defending only as well)

Breacher has +defense on enemy adjacency and Encirclement has +attack on ally adjacency, so I don't think the actual implementation is a big issue...?

 

[Rekk]

Meh. I have no interest in a bonus for coasts. Amphibious assaults are harder and that’s fine. They don’t need a corrective, especially one which might require the computer to determine a plot’s coastal status by iterating through every adjacent tile every time any unit moves. I think this proposal doesn’t have legs, and would be a harsh performance hit.

How does a worker determine if a Moai can be built on a tile?

 

[pineappledan]

How does a worker determine if a Moai can be built on a tile?

right. It might be possible to piggyback off existing code, but I don’t know. I still don’t think it’s an interesting or worthwhile addition, even if it doesn’t slow down turns

 

[Bromar1]

For March, how about splitting the combat malus? Instead of -15 on defense, make it -10% on attack and -5% on defense

 

[Stalker0]

That kinda defeats the purpose though. I feel like March is supposed to promote aggressive positioning.

How about splitting the combat malus? Instead of -15 on defense, make it -10% on attack and -5% on defense.

Bromar, just confirming, Rekk was speaking about changes to the Amphibious promotion, but you were speaking about March. Just confirming if you quoted the right thing.

 

[Bromar1]

Bromar, just confirming, Rekk was speaking about changes to the Amphibious promotion, but you were speaking about March. Just confirming if you quoted the right thing.

Woops, I meant to reply to amateurgamers post! Streams got crossed

 

[Gazebo]

Meh. I have no interest in a bonus for coasts. Amphibious assaults are harder and that’s fine. They don’t need a corrective, especially one which might require the computer to determine a plot’s coastal status by iterating through every adjacent tile every time any unit moves. I think this proposal doesn’t have legs, and would be a harsh performance hit.

Edit: if there’s a way to hook unit position into the same calculation that determines if a worker can build a coastal improvement (eg. Moai), then maybe it’s not a problem

Cheapest way to do it would be a bonus for all shallow water. Not ‘coast’ per se.

 

[pineappledan]

Cheapest way to do it would be a bonus for all shallow water. Not ‘coast’ per se.

that’s not what they want though. They would just be asking for extra defense on embarked units to be available as a selectable promotion if they did. If there was a way to split the difference, maybe you could just add 1.5x embarked defense to amphibious; maybe that would satisfy them.

I really don’t think any change is necessary here though. I would be very frustrated if not being able to 1-hit embarked units was something I had to look out for. It’s a pain in the ass to scan enemy promotions for highly defensive promotions so you don’t waste hits, and catching embarked enemy units out and dealing high damage is immensely satisfying to me.

 

[Rekk]

Defense on embarked units does not alleviate the issue the Stalker0 is describing at all.

Cheapest way to do it would be a bonus for all shallow water. Not ‘coast’ per se.

To clarify, you mean the bonus would be for a unit adjacent to all shallow water?

 

[Gazebo]

Defense on embarked units does not alleviate the issue the Stalker0 is describing at all.

To clarify, you mean the bonus would be for a unit adjacent to all shallow water?

Wait are you theorizing a bonus on coastal LAND or coastal WATER ?