[Idea] Realistic City Siege

[Nimek]

Would you ever feel it would be worthwhile to have differing CCs be damaged at differing rates on one building?

I think no. Damage reduced by armor level is enought to represents durability on damage.

Please see SiegaAid modcomp from post above

 

[Faustmouse]

But if you have burning oil for example, this will hit melee units much more than archers, and archers much more than Battle Rams.

Or long, fixed spears in the ground: They are more dangerous for mounted units than for Tanks.

If you have Neutron Bombs, they are more dangerous for living things than for drones, and EMP is basically the samy, just the other way round.

 

[Nimek]

But if you have burning oil for example, this will hit melee units much more than archers, and archers much more than Battle Rams.

Burning oil is dropped directly from walls with means that unit must be very close to it to be affected.

oil stats should be
- ignores armor ( melee and rams will be damaged at same level because oil burns wooden rams)
- add damage to melee, mounted, whelled (archery and throwing will not be affected because they never comes thatclose to walls)

Or long, fixed spears in the ground: They are more dangerous for mounted units than for Tanks.

So it will add damage to mounted but not for armored.

Everything could be done by those tags. No need to overcomplicate it

 

[Faustmouse]

Burning oil is dropped directly from walls with means that unit must be very close to it to be affected.

oil stats should be
- ignores armor ( melee and rams will be damaged at same level because oil burns wooden rams)
- add damage to melee, mounted, whelled (archery and throwing will not be affected because they never comes thatclose to walls)

Not if the Ram is armoured adequately.
And there is evidence that a person weared something like a bell which was immune to arrows and oil, then go to the gate and blow itself (and the gate) up.

So it will add damage to mounted but not for armored.

Everything could be done by those tags. No need to overcomplicate it

I don't want to make it complicated, I was just wondering since TB asked you if you need a tag that buildings hurt different CC with a varying amount of damage. And you said "no". Or did I misunderstood you both?

 

[Thunderbrd]

You had the question right but I'm gonna side with Nimek here to streamline my own efforts more than anything.

 

[Nimek]

And there is evidence that a person weared something like a bell which was immune to arrows and oil, then go to the gate and blow itself (and the gate) up

Hydro plan to add entire new combat class of self destructive units so it should go there.
And because it will be self destructive it is no trouble that he gets some damage before he blows.

 

[Faustmouse]

And because it will be self destructive it is no trouble that he gets some damage before he blows.

I assume you want to kill that unit before it causes lot of damage to your cities defense, won't you?

 

[Thunderbrd]

I assume you want to kill that unit before it causes lot of damage to your cities defense, won't you?

True... maybe the better way in such a situation would be to have the unit have an immunity to City Attacks when Attacking tag.

@Nimek:
I'm about done here with the Damage Defenses during attacks project. I think you'll find some interesting thinking emerged during its creation. This is going to also have to open up a whole Combat Class (been planned anyhow as a sub-class of Siege: the Gatecrasher Siege CC) so we can make some promotions with limited access to go with it - and craft some pre-existing promotion access to their unique new role as well.

I'll pretty much turn the initial design and development effort on how to apply these new tags and mechanisms then over to you so you can make some proposals and Hydro and I can let you know if the values on those proposals will work and maintain some balance.

@Hydro: Suffice it to say we'll be wanting Ram style units to continue into much later in the game with some stronger versions available so if you can figure out some upgrade chains for them and find some unit arts to take them all the way into the Renaissance era, that'd be cool too.

@Koshling:
Let me know here today if you're planning to address the items in that PM by the end of the day. I have to tweak with those codes as part of the current project to enhance that mechanism a bit and would be happy to try to take care of those things you mentioned that I can figure out how to resolve. I just worry then that our efforts would overlap and cause some incompatible merge situations so I'm not sure if I can move on these adjustments now or not. If you're in the middle of it the adjustments I have there will have to wait.



@All:
I'll give a brief overview of what I've programmed here on this end so you can let me know if you think there'll be any trouble or adjustments that should be made to the mechanism before I consider it 'done' and ready for a commit.

Basically, what we're looking for in this is to have Ram style units be threatened, to actually have to move in to deal damage to the defenses of the city rather than being able to do so without any threat of retaliation by city defenders.

So we'd have to make them capable of attack. I believe they (the ram crew) should tend to be 'Short Bladed' fighters by default. But when they attack, they aren't trying to damage the defender until their job of demolishing the city defenses is complete. Until then they sit there taking hits like sitting ducks. Obviously if not attacking a city, or if defending, then they fight with their short blades.

I'm giving us the following tags:
iBreakdownChance: The % chance of dealing damage to the city defenses each round the attacker has survived combat (after all first strikes - presuming from distance at the moment - have been resolved.)

This chance is ultimately modified (reduced) by the Opponent's Repel value if any. This will make Repel an even more valuable ability for City Defenders to develop. My thinking in this is that the only reason they may not have a reasonable chance to deal their damage to the wall/gate is because they are being held back away from the wall and if not fully repelled as repel normally works, the ability to repel still would play a role in making them less likely to stay up at the wall continuing to pummel it with the ram.

Unyielding will also then be valuable for Ram units so they can ignore the Repel values otherwise impeding them.

iBreakdownChanceChange: For promotions so that the ability to successfully damage the city defenses in a round can be modified by skills, afflictions and equipments.

iBreakdownDamage: The amount of city defense % that would be reduced on a successful attack round. This is modified (reduced) as a bombard attack normally would be by the city's bombard defense values. This is NOT the limit to the amount of damage the unit can do in an attack but rather the amount it will do with EACH round it succeeds.

A ram will have the special ability to be able to, if it can survive long enough, reduce the city defenses to its minimum in one combat.

The chances of surviving through such an effort should not be all that great though as the unit will not counterattack or attempt to harm in any way the defender that's been attacked UNTIL the city is at its minimum defense value. So its just sitting there taking the shots as it tries to wear out the gate.

Once distance siege is brought to bear, these guys will be relegated to the role of mopping up what defensive values the distance siege couldn't eliminate, giving attackers a way to speed up their advance to counteract some of the many things we've done to slow them down a great deal - but at the potential cost of sacrifice of their ram units.

And clever defending players will be able to enhance repel values in their cities and on their city defenders to keep these rams from being all too effective. Against a unit that does HAVE a chance to Breakdown (the name of this ability in general), defending repel values can reduce the BreakdownChance down to minimum of 5% a round with enough repel.

iBreakdownDamageChange: For promos to help them be capable of adjusting this value. I figure a 5% Damage adjustment = 20% Chance adjustment in terms of comparable value though it's obvious that one is valueless without the other on the same unit.


Anyhow, feedback is welcome. This should be available for use soon after Koshling and I sort out who's going to do those improvements on the DamageAttacker mechanism and when. Should be by end of day tomorrow we should have it sorted out one way or another.

BTW, again @Koshling: The above noted system has one area I'm not sure how to address and I don't want to screw up that brittle crystal of complex coding. The AI selection of a best attacker should take into account that they'd want to send in Rams first against a city regardless of the odds. I've included a message on the Combat Help hover that explains that the odds are flawed if they are attacking a city due to the fact that the attacker won't be trying to harm the defender until the city defenses are completely reduced. But that doesn't mean the odds shouldn't calculate as if the unit weren't trying to use its Breakdown abilities. Still, the gap in how the AI selects its attackers becomes a glaring flaw I was hoping you might be able to assist me with.

EDIT: Looks like you already did those changes while I was working on this project and its post - just read the update in the SVN thread. Cool... moving forward then.

 

[Thunderbrd]

Updates

• Additional Supplementary Damage Attacker before battle tags (both for buildings):
  • bDamagetoAttackerIgnoresArmor: as the tag states, accompanies the Damage to Attacker mechanism with an update that this damage will ignore the unit's armor value when assigning damage.
    
    
  • bDamageAllAttackers: You may use this boolean rather than specifying Combat Classes if you want the Defensive building to damage any and all attacker types. Definitely saves some text display space - I may also need to update the Defense Hover in the cities eventually to streamline the Damages attackers portion or put just that on another page - all the individual CCs will quickly add up to an overwhelming display for sure. But this will help if you can commonly use this.
    
    
  • I also added an unseen tag - meaning its only in the DLL, to help streamline the coding even further beyond what brilliant edits Koshling made for this project.
  
  
• Breakdown ability for units/promos. Adds the following tags for units:
  • iBreakdownChance: I'd start our Ram line at 10% for the Log Ram (note that the log ram (hand ram in xml) must be enabled to attack when you make this change and that means the may attack boolean as well as the combat limit amount must be made to be over 0.) Then gradually edge the chance up by another 10% per upgrade.
    
    
  • iBreakdownDamage: Testing showed this amount is very VERY powerful so should be applied extremely gradually. Log Rams should start with a base 1 on this value. Then add another 1 for each unit upgrade (though maybe increase by more than one for more advanced upgrades.)
    
    
  • Note: I was surprised our rams have first strike. I'd suggest they lose it - eventually they'll get some back by having Distance Support units on the stack. But that's how the programming expects them to have it. If any unit type provides the perfect example of a unit type that should NOT have first strike for any logical reason, Rams are it.
  
  And also for promotions:
  • iBreakdownChanceChange: A promo set could be made for the rams once we have a unique sub-combat for them that could increase this amount by a suggested 20% per step (average) up to 3 steps or so. Perhaps 15%/20%/25%.
    
    
  • iBreakdownDamage: I would recommend another promotionline of say, 5 promos that add to this value. I'd add values from these promotions along the lines of +1/+1/+2/+2/+3 and I would also spread out the tech prereqs throughout the ages that the Rams have value.
  
  Note that this whole mechanism is also preparing us for using it with units like Elephants as well. Beyond Rams, Tanks and such would also have some ability here I'd think, anything that can completely focus on Breaking Down the defenses as it attacks and will ignore the fact that it has been engaged in battle by the defender until its job of reducing the defenses is done.

Provided this commit does actually work of course!

Next project is to do the bIgnoreMinimumDefenseToAttack tags for Units and Promos. Then Hydro's request for CC specific healing tags. And DH's request for widget help. Then back on track on the stuff I'm working on myself.

 

[Nimek]

@TB

Great job

Now we are very close to reach another milestone in realistic city siege. I updated first post with todo list.

@Hydro

If you need any help with tweaking traps/rams - please let me know.

I also have save where i try to capture 180% defense city with 7 battering rams so it will be good place to test tweaked rams.

 

[Faustmouse]

Next project is to do the bIgnoreMinimumDefenseToAttack tags for Units and Promos. Then Hydro's request for CC specific healing tags. And DH's request for widget help. Then back on track on the stuff I'm working on myself.

Please don't forget the building tags I PMed you about some time ago

 

[Hydromancerx]

@Hydro

If you need any help with tweaking traps/rams - please let me know.

What kind of help?

 

[Thunderbrd]

Please don't forget the building tags I PMed you about some time ago

Yeah, those are on my list but admittedly uninspiring so they'll be done fairly soon but I'm not in the hugest rush on those.

 

[Nimek]

@hydro

I can tweak traps and send you ziped subfolder if you give me stats and combat classes that it shoul damage.

 

[Thunderbrd]

@Nimek:
I would suggest a few things in regards to planning such changes.

If you look at the links in my sig, you'll see they are google docs. There's one around here that lists off all buildings (though may be a little out of date now) that was compiled by Sargon. Very useful that one. It could serve as a basic template and you could probably also assist us with that particular categorization project by denoting how you are grouping these defensive buildings there too.

I'd suggest doing a workup of the basic details of the building and unit sets you want to influence. I did another google doc workup of the Throwing Line of units that proved extremely useful and I'd think something similar for the Ram line would be helpful too.

The benefit of the google docs is we can all take a look at it and make tweak contributions based on what we know about the structure. It's a shared planning document and would be very helpful to use in these cases.

So you've got Traps, Walls, Moats etc... to plan out - start with recording what they are then show what you'd like them to change to and H and I can then review those suggestions displayed in direct comparison. And perhaps denote there too what we'd suggest to alter about those suggestions and note here why. That'd be one document.

Then we've got the Ram units themselves to tweak. And so on. This could/should become a standard by which we as a team plan, review together, and come to a final conclusion on as a group. Then once it's pretty much all given the thumbs up by all, it makes it much easier to go in and make the necessary adjustments.

Also, when developing like this, you can leave portions for other designers to fill in but note what needs to be considered, such as your request to Hydro there to have someone else consider the CCs to be affected. (I might want to help you there too...)

I'll be doing something along those lines myself here soon for the Hunters and Scouts, and probably one for my suggestions for Animal adjustments to bring them up to speed with emerging combat mod adjustments that will help us keep the whole picture in balance.

 

[Faustmouse]

Yeah, those are on my list but admittedly uninspiring so they'll be done fairly soon but I'm not in the hugest rush on those.

No hurry, I just wanted to make sure you won't forget them in the flood of projects you are involved in
EDIT: Oh, a "iCostPerPop" Tag [Building cost ]could also be very usefull, if this is possible. The integer you put in this tag should be multiplied by the population of the city (and, if not too much extra work, a "iCostPerPopArea" und "iCostPerPopGlobal" might be usefull for some wonders.


This might not be the correct place for it, but I don't want to start a new topic (yet):
Currently, I'm reading a book about targeted killing and how different the actual warfare is compared to the pro 1900 warfare. I think it would be a really cool idea if warfare in civ would be more diverse in different eras. The realistic siege is a great example of how warefare was in the medival times, with very well fortified cities and forts. I would like to see big armies in the renaissance, massive air bombardment in the 1940's and nuclear arms race and espionage missions like in the Cold War.

Who is using mere amounts of soldiers today? There aren't any troop consuming, large battles anymore. It is more well equiped specialforces against guerillias. Great recon is also a big part of modern warfare. I think we should make new late modern era /early TH era buildings that will reveal the whole map - and buildings that might prevent an era to be revealed that way.

It may be too early to think how to implent this in the game, but I just wanted to mention it before I forget about it.

Opinions? And, maybe the most important one: Should this be discussed NOW (with an extra Thread) or should this project stay on ice for now?

 

[Hydromancerx]

@hydro

I can tweak traps and send you ziped subfolder if you give me stats and combat classes that it shoul damage.

That's alright I can do it.

 

[Thunderbrd]

No hurry, I just wanted to make sure you won't forget them in the flood of projects you are involved in
EDIT: Oh, a "iCostPerPop" Tag [Building cost ]could also be very usefull, if this is possible. The integer you put in this tag should be multiplied by the population of the city (and, if not too much extra work, a "iCostPerPopArea" und "iCostPerPopGlobal" might be usefull for some wonders.


This might not be the correct place for it, but I don't want to start a new topic (yet):
Currently, I'm reading a book about targeted killing and how different the actual warfare is compared to the pro 1900 warfare. I think it would be a really cool idea if warfare in civ would be more diverse in different eras. The realistic siege is a great example of how warefare was in the medival times, with very well fortified cities and forts. I would like to see big armies in the renaissance, massive air bombardment in the 1940's and nuclear arms race and espionage missions like in the Cold War.

Who is using mere amounts of soldiers today? There aren't any troop consuming, large battles anymore. It is more well equiped specialforces against guerillias. Great recon is also a big part of modern warfare. I think we should make new late modern era /early TH era buildings that will reveal the whole map - and buildings that might prevent an era to be revealed that way.

It may be too early to think how to implent this in the game, but I just wanted to mention it before I forget about it.

Opinions? And, maybe the most important one: Should this be discussed NOW (with an extra Thread) or should this project stay on ice for now?

I'll take a look into those requests when I get to those first requested tags. They may not be much more to implement.

I think on your second proposal, you'll find that the combat mod as it progresses will provide that kind of realism and diversity between eras. There's some good ideas there but in some ways I'm working into the game from the beginning forward. And to do that I'm establishing some platforms that will affect many eras rather than just one. Over time, the nature of warfare changes but, historically and in the game, it's gradual, not overnight (except perhaps for the nuclear era transition.) Equipments will highlight this factor a lot too.

But for a moment take a look at the Throwing line. They do completely obsolete after Modern Grenadiers. And as the line progresses it morphs, going from city defense to city attack, from very nervous and quick to withdraw to more engaged, and from blunt to sharp to explosive. Then will be replaced by Rocket Launcher units such as SAMs and Bazookas.

Other unit types will and currently do progress too. Mounted, Melee, etc... all morph into new types by the end of the game BUT what the combat mod will do is deepen their strategies.

My point here is that I agree with your statement that each era seriously needs to have its own flavors of warfare. And that's a big part of what I'm working towards.

 

[Nimek]

Ok as you said. Now we can add combat class siege_gatecrasher to all rams units.

 

[Thunderbrd]

Ok as you said. Now we can add combat class siege_gatecrasher to all rams units.

Good idea to get to that right away I think.