Idea for Hawks.

[arstal]

Maybe make them an optional item you get at a Hunter's Lodge that increases visibility instead of a unit.

With later techs you get Hawks that might give +1 Attack, or +2 sentry range?

Hawks are excess micromanagement as is anyways.

 

[Pazyryk]

Too much micromanagement, yes. Also, they are way too good at revealing the map at a very early stage in the game. Two suggestions:

1. Move them to Animal Husbandry
2. Don't allow them to city-hop through open-border cities. This has become my primary means of revealing the map, and I hate it (and no, I can't stop myself). I'm not sure how best to implement. Maybe they should only be allowed to re-station to hunters, rangers, etc., and not to cities at all.

 

[arstal]

Or just eliminiate them.

 

[PPQ_Purple]

Personally I like the way hawks are now.
What I would add however is that hawks should have an attack power and be able to kill enemy hawks trying to scout.

That would give hawks a whole new dimension.

 

[mcwill123]

My solution. Hawks can only rebase in the same tile. i.e. they can move from a hunter to a city he is in or vice versa. Or from one hunter to another in the same tile. The only exception might be letting a hawk return to its original city. Other moves are giving hawks some kind of incredible intelligence that real hawks don't have.

 

[Pazyryk]

mcwill123,

Maybe just removed the "rebase" function entirely. Then hawks could only load and unload (city to hunter or hunter to city.

 

[Breez]

mcwill123,

Maybe just removed the "rebase" function entirely. Then hawks could only load and unload (city to hunter or hunter to city.

that makes the most sense to me

 

[mcwill123]

I mostly agree, but I think it would be sensible to allow the hawk to go home to his original city. Some birds can do that and I doubt it would break anything.

 

[Pazyryk]

Oops! I meant Animal Mastery in my post above, not Animal Husbandry (they should be much later, certainly not earlier as I stated above).

Anyway, it looks like Selphi already nerfed the foreign-city-touring capability of birds for 8.0. I feel so empowered when the change-log suddenly reflects my wishes.

 

[dommain]

I still think hawks could have a scout range of 8 with only a view range of 1 that cannot be controlled, automatically scout non scouted area at the base (can still re-base for next turn or load) and randomly scout area outside viewing area if black shroud is already scouted. It would add value having multiple hawks then just 1 or 2.

 

[Pazyryk]

OK, I like the two changes now showing in 8.0: Can't rebase to non-team (so no more exploration in foreign lands without even having a hunter there) and visibility reduced from 5 to 3. So now it is more of a reconnaissance tool for investigating specific areas (rather than an uber map revealer). Great!

There is still a micromanagement problem, especially if you want to use these to keep tabs on rival territory each turn. I would be overjoyed if there were "auto surveillance" buttons for hawks. There could be 8 buttons, N, NW, W, SW, S, SE, E, NE, that tell the hawk to survey in that direction at the beginning of each turn. (This would work great for hawks based at cities or fortified hunters, but you probably want manual control when actively exploring.)

 

[[to_xp]Gekko]

do they still get autoselected when you doubleclick the stack they are in? that's soooo annoying.

 

[a_civilian]

OK, I like the two changes now showing in 8.0: Can't rebase to non-team (so no more exploration in foreign lands without even having a hunter there) and visibility reduced from 5 to 3. So now it is more of a reconnaissance tool for investigating specific areas (rather than an uber map revealer). Great!

Well, if the targeting range is still 1 it's more of a visibility increase for the hunter (better than but on the same comparison scale as sentry II) rather than a tool for investigating specific areas.

 

[Sephi]

There is still a micromanagement problem, especially if you want to use these to keep tabs on rival territory each turn. I would be overjoyed if there were "auto surveillance" buttons for hawks. There could be 8 buttons, N, NW, W, SW, S, SE, E, NE, that tell the hawk to survey in that direction at the beginning of each turn. (This would work great for hawks based at cities or fortified hunters, but you probably want manual control when actively exploring.)

you can already set hawks to autoexplore.

 

[graywarden]

this might be a little corny, but i always thought that it would be humerous to allow the flying kind to be able to drop a doo-doo bomb on their fly overs on units - possibly a form of taunting could be a result..... haha.....

 

[Jabie]

Different techs / civs could allow different "Hawks". The Hawk could have visibility range 3 whereas the Great Eagle (available at Animal Mastery) could have visibility range 5.

 

[Jarrema]

It would be nice to introduce some kind of very weak "air attack" for birds of specific civilisation... or to have 2 or 3 different kinds of birds for every civ - hawk as an early (with possible upgrade later), scouting unit, than some kind o "bombard" as a mid-to late game unit (maybe ravens - atacks do a little damage and can blind opponent?), and "anti-air" unit to counter this one

 

[Neomega]

I definitely think hawks should be able to intercept and fight each other, maybe with Austrin getting a powerful variant.