Heroes

[DRJ]

actually not a bad idea at all, but i am wondering

they could be the reason for shismas or crusade-events, once they die - or get killed by a civ with other or even same religion. that way predominant religions could be rebalanced a bit and the various subreligions like protestantism, sunnites etc could get represented. also the assassin mode gets a more political significance...
after all, religions with no representatives tend to die out like hellenism which has no priests anymore for example. who still believes in zeus today?

 

[strategyonly]

they could be the reason for shismas or crusade-events, once they die - or get killed by a civ with other or even same religion. that way predominant religions could be rebalanced a bit and the various sub-religions like protestantism, Sunnites etc could get represented. also the assassin mode gets a more political significance...
after all, religions with no representatives tend to die out like Hellenism which has no priests anymore for example. who still believes in Zeus today?

Actually quite a few scientist/paleontologist believe that the portrayal of Jesus today is actually the portrayal of Zeus back in the olden days, when they believed in Zeus (and needed a face from someplace) and that it is a Mason/Templar society that keeps it that way..

 

[DRJ]

Could be! btw: "Caesar's Messiah: The Roman Conspiracy to Invent Jesus" by J. Atwell is an interesting book regarding this topic as well.

What you said gave me an idea: as right now for example the byzantine culture can only be "built" with the prerequisite of roman culture, what about having certain religions evolving of other religions? protestantism could be spreading if you already have roman catholic christianity, also arianism and other early christian sects could be represented, all of them having different bonusses... I think the religious diversity could very well orientate at what the different buildable cultures provide...

 

[Hydromancerx]

What you said gave me an idea: as right now for example the byzantine culture can only be "built" with the prerequisite of roman culture, what about having certain religions evolving of other religions? protestantism could be spreading if you already have roman catholic christianity, also arianism and other early christian sects could be represented, all of them having different bonusses... I think the religious diversity could very well orientate at what the different buildable cultures provide...

Originally I gave religious requirements to nearly all the cultures such as Vikings has Asatru, Egyptians Kemetism, Holy Roman Christianity, Aztecs Nagualism, etc. But then it really limited things since you could no longer play say Voodoo Holy Romans or Buddhist Arabs.

 

[Praetyre]

I'd prefer it the other way around, all things considered.

 

[Hydromancerx]

I'd prefer it the other way around, all things considered.

As the song goes ... "even Jewish Nazis". We want to make sure even that strange combo can be. However we don't have a Third Reich culture in the game. But its quie possible to be at least Jewish Germans.

 

[Dancing Hoskuld]

Let us try this again. I have not tested this in game but here is the promotion you asked for. Currently it is set up so that it can only be given to a unit not erned.

 

[strategyonly]

Let us try this again. I have not tested this in game but here is the promotion you asked for. Currently it is set up so that it can only be given to a unit not earned.

OK worked fine, sent unit back to capital but had a PINK icon see attached.

EDIT: I believe i found it in the C2C.py, was:

Art/Interface/Buttons/Phoenix

changed it to:

Art/Interface/Buttons/Promotions/Phoenix1

 

[Hydromancerx]

strategyonly and I had some PMing conversions about Hero units. Here are some of the highlights we though we should share with you ...

Hydro

I am thinking perhaps we should have the Heroic monument building made and then take out all the GP powers they have. That would leave them to either be a super fighting unit, can make the heroic wonders or make the Heroic Monument general building. That would at least make them more balanced.

strategyonly

OK . . . I was going to change the Heroes LESS GP stuff anyways, was just thinking of what i needed to do, i have over 50 things i am thinking about already in my head, and only can do one, because of the way C2C is currently set up. I hope the new guy really knows his python, and really good too. Cause i have ALOT for him to do, if he can get it to where i want it that is.

Hydro

Here are a few issue with the heroes

1. Like you said one of the biggest problems is that the heroes come too late. This is true.

2. While having the cultures is much more interesting people still have been wanting something associated with the civ they picked.

3. I have found that it unfair that some cultures have heroes and others do not. I also find that having 2 for each culture may be too much.

4. Heroes overall are too powerful because they can be too common.

To solves these issue I propose that each civ get 1 hero. This hero should be named after the leader they picked. In other words the avatar version of their leaderhead. Rather than getting a bunch of heroes you would get just one based on the leaderhead you picked. When this leaderhead comes about would be the same as they are now, just not linked to a culture.

For example Tokogawa of Japan would get the hero Tokogawa. The only problems I see is,

1. Can you make a unique unit for only 1 leaderhead?

2. What if we do not have a hero for that leaderhead?

What do you think?

strategyonly

I completely agree with the last 1/2, absolutely. If there is no unit, we could always do like the Patton Unit and just make a particular vehicle/mounted/land/air unit fit to make this happen, doesnt HAVE to look like the person.

Note that some stuff was edited out since it was either really stupid or I changed my mind (and told SO so). Feel free to comment on our brainstorming PMs.

 

[Koshling]

Two observations/questions:

1) Will we be losing 'achievements' altogether? If not will this move to some other (non-hero) mechanic?

2) I had on my list of things I need to do fixing the AIs use of heroes. However, if they are going to change radically I shouldnt spend any time on this until they do. When do you exopect to have a working plan?

 

[strategyonly]

Two observations/questions:

1) Will we be losing 'achievements' altogether? If not will this move to some other (non-hero) mechanic?

2) I had on my list of things I need to do fixing the AIs use of heroes. However, if they are going to change radically I shouldn't spend any time on this until they do. When do you expect to have a working plan?

I will start doing some of it now, but the implementation will take some time, and "we" really haven't gotten what we said is the correct way to go or not yet? We are just throwing stuff out there for now, so YES, i'd say hold off on the Hero AI planning for NOW, but soon, ok.

And the achievements, they will get fewer per Hero, and maybe even stronger ones, maybe not, its all loose ends yet.

I really haven't heard much from the public on this stuff yet???

 

[Koshling]

I will start doing some of it now, but the implementation will take some time, and "we" really haven't gotten what we said is the correct way to go or not yet? We are just throwing stuff out there for now, so YES, i'd say hold off on the Hero AI planning for NOW, but soon, ok.

And the achievements, they will get fewer per Hero, and maybe even stronger ones, maybe not, its all loose ends yet.

I really haven't heard much from the public on this stuff yet???

Don't make the acheivements stronger. It's already a total no-brainer to build andacheiveemnt rather than use a hero in any military role for any that have access to them.

Also I'd be very wary about giving different achievements to different heroes in combination with the idea of limitting each civ to one hero throughout the game. If you do that you need to make VERY sure the different achievements are balanced against one another since any one player will only ever have access to a specific one. IMO that's a can of worms (balance wise) you realy don't want to get into.

 

[DRJ]

I really haven't heard much from the public on this stuff yet???

Ok... I had a game where I built all achievements with the heroes asap and got very far ahead. I think they are way OP, counting for all cities. What if a hero could, instead of becoming a special person in a city, build a smaller improvement? like 1% instead of 4% ? But there would be the possibility to do it 4 times (to achieve the old 4%).
So, to get all achievements like now you would have to get 4 times more heroes.
And you had to specialise your advance in the certain achievement trees!
You could give each graphic of the achievement a little star, for acheivement 2 in the chain 2 stars and so on.
For example: once you pick hero X you can see it can built food 3 star or military 2 star or trade 1 star achievement...

Heroes should also be tied to certain achievements chains, not all should be able to build all achievements but rather representing something that was somehow connected to their personality (like Ghandi should not be able to build military achievement but food piety achievement maybe^^).

AI, of course, should have #1 priority to build achievements with it's heroes - of course only if the city in which it is born is not under siege...

 

[Koshling]

I just had a brainwave!! (at least I think so )

How about if heroes worked like this:

• Initially they are always only modestly good military units with fairly modest special initial promotions (like warlord corporals and so on)
• They get a special hero-only promotion line that grants access to special builds, leading eventually to the achievements (so we could have a basic hero building that maybe adds culture or military specialist or something they get near the start, right up to the all-city achievements some of them have today)

This way you have to actually promote your hero up, all the time risking his destruction, to get access to the powerful achievements.

The benefits are:

• No need to limit hero availability to one per civ, or make them too hard to get
• New-born heroes are not especially powerful
• If you want to get to the powerful options you have to take risks. The extra tension of do-I-try-for-more-promotions vs build-what-I-can-now adds to gameplay
• Optionally the promotion line could branch, so that (for example) if you choose a 'lesser agricultural guru' promotion (which gives rise to the ability to construct the 'lesser agricultural achievement') which precludes then getting other 'lesser guru' promotions, but enables 'greater agricultural guru' (which allows you to build 'greater agricultural achievement')

This might need an extra prereqPromotion tag on unit constructions, but that would be super easy to add.

 

[Hanny]

Perhaps any unit of level 5+ could becomea hero?, Lvl plus building plus culture ect gives acess to the Hero tech tree.

 

[DRJ]

I just had a brainwave!! (at least I think so )

How about if heroes worked like this:

• Initially they are always only modestly good military units with fairly modest special initial promotions (like warlord corporals and so on)
• They get a special hero-only promotion line that grants access to special builds, leading eventually to the achievements (so we could have a basic hero building that maybe adds culture or military specialist or something they get near the start, right up to the all-city achievements some of them have today)

This way you have to actually promote your hero up, all the time risking his destruction, to get access to the powerful achievements.

The benefits are:

• No need to limit hero availability to one per civ, or make them too hard to get
• New-born heroes are not especially powerful
• If you want to get to the powerful options you have to take risks. The extra tension of do-I-try-for-more-promotions vs build-what-I-can-now adds to gameplay
• Optionally the promotion line could branch, so that (for example) if you choose a 'lesser agricultural guru' promotion (which gives rise to the ability to construct the 'lesser agricultural achievement') which precludes then getting other 'lesser guru' promotions, but enables 'greater agricultural guru' (which allows you to build 'greater agricultural achievement')

This might need an extra prereqPromotion tag on unit constructions, but that would be super easy to add.

Yeah I like this brain wave a lot. Getting them is quite nice, isn't it?

 

[strategyonly]

I just had a brainwave!! (at least I think so )

How about if heroes worked like this:

• Initially they are always only modestly good military units with fairly modest special initial promotions (like warlord corporals and so on)
• They get a special hero-only promotion line that grants access to special builds, leading eventually to the achievements (so we could have a basic hero building that maybe adds culture or military specialist or something they get near the start, right up to the all-city achievements some of them have today)

This way you have to actually promote your hero up, all the time risking his destruction, to get access to the powerful achievements.

The benefits are:

• No need to limit hero availability to one per civ, or make them too hard to get
• New-born heroes are not especially powerful
• If you want to get to the powerful options you have to take risks. The extra tension of do-I-try-for-more-promotions vs build-what-I-can-now adds to gameplay
• Optionally the promotion line could branch, so that (for example) if you choose a 'lesser agricultural guru' promotion (which gives rise to the ability to construct the 'lesser agricultural achievement') which precludes then getting other 'lesser guru' promotions, but enables 'greater agricultural guru' (which allows you to build 'greater agricultural achievement')

This might need an extra prereqPromotion tag on unit constructions, but that would be super easy to add.

I think we have a winner here, but time will tell.

 

[Koshling]

I think we have a winner here, but time will tell.

Let me know if you do need an extra tag. That one should be espeically easy to add if there isn't a way to do it currently.

 

[strategyonly]

ahahaa first i have to figure out exactly what you said

 

[mcookie83]

I just had a brainwave!! (at least I think so )

How about if heroes worked like this:

• Initially they are always only modestly good military units with fairly modest special initial promotions (like warlord corporals and so on)
• They get a special hero-only promotion line that grants access to special builds, leading eventually to the achievements (so we could have a basic hero building that maybe adds culture or military specialist or something they get near the start, right up to the all-city achievements some of them have today)

This way you have to actually promote your hero up, all the time risking his destruction, to get access to the powerful achievements.

The benefits are:

• No need to limit hero availability to one per civ, or make them too hard to get
• New-born heroes are not especially powerful
• If you want to get to the powerful options you have to take risks. The extra tension of do-I-try-for-more-promotions vs build-what-I-can-now adds to gameplay
• Optionally the promotion line could branch, so that (for example) if you choose a 'lesser agricultural guru' promotion (which gives rise to the ability to construct the 'lesser agricultural achievement') which precludes then getting other 'lesser guru' promotions, but enables 'greater agricultural guru' (which allows you to build 'greater agricultural achievement')

This might need an extra prereqPromotion tag on unit constructions, but that would be super easy to add.

That I like more, then the actual "hero way" (not telling that the actual is bad - Koshling's idea is just a little more diverse and interesting)!