Improving the "Defender" trait.

[MaxAstro]

I don't know if it's just me, but Defender feels fairly lackluster as a trait, especially for the people who only have it and one other trait (I gave the Elohim back Spiritual in my version). Homeland just plain isn't a very useful promotion.

So I got to thinking: What if Homeland opened up a complete promotion chain that you could then apply to your units? Here are my ideas, let me know which are good and which are over the top.

First off, make Defensive require Combat 2 or Homeland (If that's too much, then have it require either combat 2, or Combat 1 and Homeland).

Secondly, add three new promotions: Vanguard, Protector, and Sentinel, available to all units.

Vanguard (Requires only Homeland) gives -20% strength, but +50% cultural strength, effectively specializing the unit in defending your territory.

Protector (Requires Homeland and Combat 1, and then either Combat 3 or City Garrison 1) gives +20% cultural strength and +15% city defense.

Sentinel (Requires Protector and Combat 2, and then either Combat 4 or City Garrison 2) gives +30% cultural strength, +20% city defense, and +10% withdraw rate.

Buying the entire tree requires reaching level 8, and gives a total of +110% cultural strength (Counting Homeland), +35% city defense, and +20% withdraw rate, with the negative side effect of -20% strength (effectively makes the total in-culture bonus 90%).

Passing on Vanguard to avoid the -20% strength brings the total culture bonus to 60%, plus the other bonuses.

Thoughts?

 

[MagisterCultuum]

Sound interesting. I tend to just add more traits to leaders whose trait I find weak instead of creating more promotions that have such prereqs, but I may give your approach a shot.

(I also gave the Elohim spiritual back, gave Sandalphon Philosophical, and gave Amelanchier the protective trait (added back based on warlords version, now gives City Garrison1, Drill 1&2 to all archers and disciples) and made aggressive give out combat1 to all unitcombats)

One thing that does bother me though is how your units are going to get the xp needed for those promotions and still be able to keep up with your rivals in other promotions, like shock and cover? I was thinking it would be really cool if the homeland promotion or defender trait granted +1 xp per battle within your cultural borders (and possibly xp less outside?). (It might also make sense for raiders to give this bonus only outside of your borders)

 

[MaxAstro]

Unfortunately I'm not sure how to code that, or I would do it. The main source of XP for the promotions would be combat occurring inside your borders, ideally; I might reduce the requirements on the promotions to make them easier to attain, but I don't want someone who whores free XP bonuses (Theocracy + Apprenticeship + Conquest + Command Post + Form of the Titan people, you know who you are) to be able to just produce units with the high level Homeland promotions.

Also, I added a new city defense building that gives City Garrison1 for free (to help address the problem of how do city defenders afford promotions?), and Amelanchier with one of those built would only need 2XP to buy Protector for an Archery unit or Disciple...

EDIT: Nevermind, forgot that Aggressive doesn't apply to Archers/Disciples... Wonder if I should change it so it does...?