Thunderbrd
C2C War Dog
So I keep hearing that people are finding that they and the AI are running up against problems with training Law Enforcement units at particular points. It has been said that they need to not obsolete so quickly and so on.
Thus, we should have a conversation about this because I've looked at this about 5 times to make sure we have no further problems and yet players continue to feel there are. So we need to figure out what's making them so difficult to train.
The design basic on these, up to modern at least, is to obsolete the unit when the next unit after the next upgrade becomes available. Thus, Watchers, for example, which are made available at Deception, don't obsolete when their upgrade, Enforcers come into play at Conduct but rather obsolete at Dualism, when Town Watchmen are unlocked.
Another design principle is that each unit requires a building to be trained and the building becomes available at the same tech level as the unit it unlocks. The buildings should also follow the same obsoletion rules as the units, obsoleting 2 steps away, while the next building is an upgrade of the previous one.
The building prerequisites for units were recently updated so that the previous law enforcement unit type can also accept the next level building as fulfilling the prerequisite. So the Watchers can still be trained if you have the Sentry Post (but for whatever reason still can't train Enforcers.)
In the modern, this gets a little more complicated because a couple of Law Enforcement unit types are intended to be concurrent to one another, with each concurrent LE unit being a little better at one roll or another. Police Cars are better at patrol and general crime reduction, while Riot Police are better at arrests (combat). The Police APC replaces the Riot Police while the Helicopter is best at spotting criminals but cannot make arrests itself. (Thus the Police Car, Police APC and the Police Helicopter are intended to all work together in their cities.)
Now, one thing I think I'm going to need to do, for the sake of the AI if not the players, is to remove transitional buildng prereqs that the prerequisite LE unit buildings may also require. For example, the BUILDING_GUARDHOUSE requires a Castle. The AI may not be able to make this leap in understanding the need for a castle enough to be getting Guards in their cities. Thus I might have to remove the Castle prerequisite.
Another thing that I found was screwing up the City Guard was the BONUS requirement of Ammunition to be problematic because Ammunition wasn't actually something that came into play until later (apparently early ammo is personally made so Ammunition wasn't in the game until some techs later than the City Guard was being enabled so the Ammunition prerequisite had become a proxy tech prerequisite that was much later than it should've been.) So Bonus prereqs may be causing some trouble in some spots as well.
What I need is for us to all take a look at this. A deep look at each step of the path, and figure out what might be causing further not yet noted issues. Apparently the sense that the player and AI are still unable to keep a consistent access to the most current LE types is still a problem in the game.
So to that end I have made sure to update these online charts for review (I've highlighted the LE unit lines):
1) Expanding Unit Review - Prereq Techs
2) Expanding Unit Review - Prereq Buildings
3) Expanding Unit Review - Prereq Bonuses
I wish I had the building's building prereqs and the building's Bonus prereqs charted out but I do have their techs charted:
4) Building Costs by Tech (Scroll down until you see the blue highlight line for the LE buildings.)
It may well be that the problems we're having lurk in the Building or Bonus prereqs for the prerequisite buildings being a bit too restrictive.
So aside from noting that these buildings need to not have any other building prerequisites so as not to confuse the AI, can you spot what may be causing problems for you and/or the AI?
Thus, we should have a conversation about this because I've looked at this about 5 times to make sure we have no further problems and yet players continue to feel there are. So we need to figure out what's making them so difficult to train.
The design basic on these, up to modern at least, is to obsolete the unit when the next unit after the next upgrade becomes available. Thus, Watchers, for example, which are made available at Deception, don't obsolete when their upgrade, Enforcers come into play at Conduct but rather obsolete at Dualism, when Town Watchmen are unlocked.
Another design principle is that each unit requires a building to be trained and the building becomes available at the same tech level as the unit it unlocks. The buildings should also follow the same obsoletion rules as the units, obsoleting 2 steps away, while the next building is an upgrade of the previous one.
The building prerequisites for units were recently updated so that the previous law enforcement unit type can also accept the next level building as fulfilling the prerequisite. So the Watchers can still be trained if you have the Sentry Post (but for whatever reason still can't train Enforcers.)
In the modern, this gets a little more complicated because a couple of Law Enforcement unit types are intended to be concurrent to one another, with each concurrent LE unit being a little better at one roll or another. Police Cars are better at patrol and general crime reduction, while Riot Police are better at arrests (combat). The Police APC replaces the Riot Police while the Helicopter is best at spotting criminals but cannot make arrests itself. (Thus the Police Car, Police APC and the Police Helicopter are intended to all work together in their cities.)
Now, one thing I think I'm going to need to do, for the sake of the AI if not the players, is to remove transitional buildng prereqs that the prerequisite LE unit buildings may also require. For example, the BUILDING_GUARDHOUSE requires a Castle. The AI may not be able to make this leap in understanding the need for a castle enough to be getting Guards in their cities. Thus I might have to remove the Castle prerequisite.
Another thing that I found was screwing up the City Guard was the BONUS requirement of Ammunition to be problematic because Ammunition wasn't actually something that came into play until later (apparently early ammo is personally made so Ammunition wasn't in the game until some techs later than the City Guard was being enabled so the Ammunition prerequisite had become a proxy tech prerequisite that was much later than it should've been.) So Bonus prereqs may be causing some trouble in some spots as well.
What I need is for us to all take a look at this. A deep look at each step of the path, and figure out what might be causing further not yet noted issues. Apparently the sense that the player and AI are still unable to keep a consistent access to the most current LE types is still a problem in the game.
So to that end I have made sure to update these online charts for review (I've highlighted the LE unit lines):
1) Expanding Unit Review - Prereq Techs
2) Expanding Unit Review - Prereq Buildings
3) Expanding Unit Review - Prereq Bonuses
I wish I had the building's building prereqs and the building's Bonus prereqs charted out but I do have their techs charted:
4) Building Costs by Tech (Scroll down until you see the blue highlight line for the LE buildings.)
It may well be that the problems we're having lurk in the Building or Bonus prereqs for the prerequisite buildings being a bit too restrictive.
So aside from noting that these buildings need to not have any other building prerequisites so as not to confuse the AI, can you spot what may be causing problems for you and/or the AI?