- Riparian: can't you do this with the Songhai ability, or is it locked to Traits? (and given that's their only niche, should you encroach on it?)
I've been chipping away at this stuff for years, so I can't always say that things work the way now that they did when I made the attempt -- but yes last i checked anyway its locked to traits or hardcoded in a way that is not accessible to DB modding. I've asked for a UnitPromotions_FakeFeatures table to match the ones we have for features and terrain movement, but idk if there will ever be any uptake from devs. RE: overlap with songhai, there's a promotion that overlaps for any other terrain movement UA so i dont see why not, plus songhai gets it for all units, not just some recon -- for songhai i guess this makes this choice less valuable, but same goes for aztecs/iroquois choosing tb1 etc.
edit: i just noticed a "RiverDoubleMove" in the promo tables -- must be a relatively recent addition, but will look into this and update if its suitable. This could become a db-only component
edit 2: seems to work, can run this as db-only
Edit
- Coastal: Don't you feel it makes more sense to embark and sail down the coast, and therefore for the promotion to enable this sort of movement to be about embark/disembark cost or similar?
valid interpretation certainly, there was a reason i did this on-land originally -- i was taking away fast forests and jungles and giving back fast rivers and coastal. But now this swap is not so much the case. There was also no way to control embark back then, not so now... but the work is already done so
jk imo it still plays alright too. But this direction you've suggested is probably even better, i'm thinking a promo with double move in coast and flat embark but NOT disembark
edit 3: also working! db-only too!
- Horses (with 5 moves) can in principle move 3 atm in "single rough" tiles, but it goes down to 2 in "double rough" (forest+hill), does that mean your half movement promotion makes it 2 in "single rough" and only 1 in "double rough"? This seems like a major balance change that is probably best discussed separately (though I understand why, for consistency, it should be seen with the Recon stuff)
yeah this one is heavy nerf to horse, but the thematic value seems high to me, plus i like to include community requests when i can.. This works by applying both half move and extra move simultaneously, which seem to take effect in that order (ie 2 plot cost turns into 4 then gets the extra move for 5 -- i suspect the tree hill will thus take 7 moves.) Call it an acquired taste
- Does the AI use Change Port? I assume its tied to great admiral AI? (I was thinking about "Airlift" ability for the Harbor for all units -- was hoping AI would understand that naturally due to Airport code being generic)
i have never noticed it using it unfortunately. I am thinking of writing a simple Ai logic to make this actually viable for play: on each move, will check if recon is in a coast city ie a port -> will get the unit's destination and compare its distance to distance from other port cities... if theres a faster option the code will just teleport the unit -- so it wouldnt 'use' the ability directly but we could make it seem like it does. Its a very flat ability however, only available per unit (not promo) -- I think we need bigger updates to it to make it useful to modders.
- Would you agree that, to make Recon useful as a combat unit, the CS of recon units must be increased either on the base or on promotions, or both?
yes absolutely, that brings me to the point of cross-posting into your thread. Right now we're missing "something" combat-wise on TB, but once we add it, it will feel like survivalism too light in contrast. There are a lot of CS options though, just have to be clever about it.
i will be turning back to my "counter-recon" mod shortly, which is where I include any non-movement, non-xp related changes... its a little outdated currently. I have some ideas, but I'm looking to you and others as a starting point for recommendations on what non-movement stuff works best, ie what have you tried that fits really well?
I'll share some additional thoughts here re minimum that needs to be done for recon, if nothing else so i don't forget them later
some of these are addressed in various ways in my mod but not always sticking to the db, will need to review db options:
- we lost the balance-off-the-start -- many of us don't care, but many of us do; this must be fixed
- fast recon are not a problem, much of the community wants fast recon, its where and how they are fast that matters. fast trees are thematically jarring. fast everywhere is somehow boring and OP at the same time.
- vision on its own feels like an administrative bonus of sorts aka boring, and can be over-applied. these need to be redistributed, i'm thinking one set on tb3, one set on surv3 -- only super recon with both branches will stack super vision
- cs of both branches needs to be rebalanced -- there isn't only one way of doing this, but tb branch needs something at each node, and imo it should never be active at same time as surv. there is a "stronger when not adjacent to any friendly unit" ability in promo tables that is almost perfect for the recon role -- if this could be split into attack and defend bonus, we put the defend on surv and the attack on tb -- i think this could work well. The current 'outside of friendly' is kinda silly thematically
values for Recon; You didn't change them
