Major Discoveries on Charm... CHARM WORKS

[tom2050]

Might not be a Major discovery, but it is major enough

To see charm in the editor, need to use the cracked editor.. also can use Steph's or Quintillus' editors.

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EDIT:

Known Charm Functions so far:
1. Charm units can destroy Charm Barrier Buildings, and may destroy other buildings until all Charm Buildings are destroyed.
2. Units in a city are not necessarily immune to Charm bombardment while a Charm Barrier building is in place. Charm building function still needs to be discovered with further tests.
3. Charmed unit bombardments REDUCE the defense of the enemy. Here is an example:

It seems that a successful Charm Bombard will HALVE the enemy units defense value if there is a successful hit. The value is rounded down as such if a charm bombard is succssful:
Defense 5: 5/2=2.5; 2.5 Round Down=2
Defense 99: 99/2=49.5; 49.5 Round Down=49

4. Units cannot be targeted multiple times by charm bombard. Once they are hit and their defense lowered, they cannot be further affected.
5. Charm Bombards only last for the current turn; a unit that has had it's defense lowered will have it's regular stats back the next turn.
6. Sea and Air units are immune to charm damage. Land units can be damaged by charm bombard from air, naval, and other land units.
7. Chance a charm bombard will hit falls in line with the chance normal artillery bombard will hit, per the Combat Calculator.
8. All units in a stack may be affected by a single charm attack, which halves their defenses. Each unit of a stack will be checked against the Bombard Str/RoF of the attacking Charm unit, and all units in the stack which 'lose' will have their defense halved, and units which 'win' the bombard check will not be affected. Combat Calculator can be used to figure out the percentages.
9. The game shows a unit's lowered defense value in-game, so no need to figure things out yourself if a charm attack was successful or not.
10. Cruise Missiles and Nukes do not seem to be able to use Charm, and act as they normally do.
11. A units attack value seems to not ever be affected by Charm. Defensive Bombard does not lower attack or defense values either, but acts as it normally does.
12. Lethal land bombard on a charm artillery will allow it to bombard a unit with 1 hp left. Without lethal land bombard, the unit cannot bombard a unit with 1 hp left.

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Here is where I will post any discoveries on the Charm function, in an attempt to figure out precisely what it does.

A quick 1st test discovered Charm DOES INDEED FUNCTION IN GAME, so it is very unlikely IMO that Charm does nothing. In fact, it does do significant changes from the very limited 20 minute tests I have observed so far.

CHARM UNIT:

Given the Artillery AI Strategy, and Charm flag checked

Cost: 10
Movement Points: 1
Attack/Defense: 0
Bombard Str/Range/ROF: 10/1/5

Cities were given a building with Charm Barrier flag only.

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Here is the proof that Charm does indeed WORK in game, it does at least do something. I'm completely surprised none of this was noticed before ?? It is fairly obvious there are some massive differences between a Charm Artillery piece and a normal Artillery piece.

1. AI AGGRESSIVENESS - Charm artillery pieces act like Offensive/Defensive flagged units to the AI, and NOT like Artillery flagged units. They will openly and aggresively attack with bombard! They will also fortify in cities as artillery does. Artillery, likewise, only fortifies or sits in a city. This means that the 'Charm' flag is doing this... therefore the Charm flag does do something. EDIT: AI uses Charm artillery just like Normal artillery

2. Bombardment Differences - Charm artillery pieces do not act the same as normal artillery pieces. Charm artillery does not effect units with A/D values at all (from what I've seen). But Charm bombardment DOES destroy buildings in cities (it destroyed the building with the Charm barrier! ).

3. Destroying City Buildings - It seems Charm artillery pieces WILL NOT destroy a city building UNLESS a building with Charm Barrier is present in the city! Then it will destroy all other buildings 1st, and will destroy the Charm Barrier building last. Strange, I know... Charm artillery attacks do not always hit the buildings, they do occasionally miss, so a Charm artillery pieces' bombard str and ROF likely effects this.
When a Wonder/Sm Wonder was also in the city, Charm attacks were able to destroy the Sm Wonder, but I did not a Wonder taken out. Then occasionally, the Charm Barrier Bldg was destroyed and other improvements remained. It may be all chance what gets taken out.

4. Defensive Bombard - Charm artillery pieces are still capable of damaging attacking units by taking off 1 hitpoint (if it succeeds that is).

OTHER NOTES... Charm artillery cannot effect other Charm artillery pieces when in this configuration (units cannot bombard other 0/0 Attack/Defense units being the reason).
Charm Artillery units do not alter the fact that enemy charm artillery units will destroy a building or not.

BOTTOM LINE SO FAR:
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Charm Artillery attacks do not effect other units.
Charm Artillery attacks seem to destroy buildings only when a Charm Barrier Bldg is in place within these guidelines (from what it seems):
Palace/Wonders seem to be impervious to Charm bombardment.
Improvement/Sm Wonders can be taken out.
Once Charm Barrier bldg is taken out, no more improvements/Sm Wonders can be destroyed.
Charm artillery does not seem to alter whether or not an improvement can be destroyed or not.

THE USES of CHARM?
Just from what I've found here, the uses are not incredible, but there are some! It's similar to Collateral Damage flag, but works a bit different.

MY GUESS is that the Collateral Damage flag replaced Charm, and so they took it out of the editor.

Testing with units that have A/D values will be next.

Tom

 

[tom2050]

Additional Info...
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AI actively attacks other units with Charm artillery bombardments, although it never hits. It could possibly have some other unknown effect.

Charm Artillery does have ZOC capabilities (no Attack or Defense, just Bombard).

Charm units with Attack and Defense values
Charm units with Attack and Defense seem to have no effect destroying city improvements when attacking insteading of bombarding.

Tom

 

[nick0515]

Weird. It's such a messy process its hard to imagine what purpose this could have served. I'm failing to come up with any useful use for this at present. Please enlighten us Tom if you come up with any good way to use this.

Great discovery none-the-less! I hope you discover some more useful aspect to this flag.

Cheers

Nick

 

[tom2050]

There are some uses for it, perhaps not many. Here is an example of the top of my head.

Take a fantasy mod, something like Lord of the Rings.
-A wizard tower could be a buildable improvement, with some great bonus', but it would be a Charm Barrier (and Charm Barrier seems to be the wrong wording, as it is a barrier to nothing, but allows Charm artillery units to be able to destroy improvements).
-Having this powerful improvement means extra city protection will be needed, because your otherwise safe improvements in the city could now be destroyed by Charm units designed to attack magical improvements (the Wizard Tower). In the process they may lay waste to other buildings before they land a good strike and destroy the Wizard Tower, in which they were successful.
-At that point, with their job accomplished, and the magical tower destroyed (which supplied magic to the whole of the cities improvements), they can no longer be used to destroy anything further.

Sure, it's a bit odd, and would require by the player espionage to find out what cities may have these Charm Barrier buildings built, but that would make espionage and looking into enemy cities much more necessary as well... In order to take out these powerful buildings without necessarily relying on having a force large enough to take the city.

They could be used as guerillas, special forces, terrorists in a modern scenario, special artillery pieces (since normal arty hits units). If collateral damage is not wanted (since it destroys roads as well), this could be an alternative to that.

If you wish a unit to only be able to arty to destroy buildings, and nothing else, Charm is the key if setup right. Why they called it Charm? Who knows... only Firaxsis would be able to come up with an answer to that

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AI also brings defenders along with Charm artillery, although not always... It's a good idea to give Charm artillery some defensive power, since it doesn't seem to effect the unit in any other way. AI will capture 0 Defense Charm units if left undefended, and seems to enjoy leaving some Charm units to defend a city, so that would suggest they may have a beneficial use there as well.

1 THOUGHT was this: Charm may also possibly effect fast units abilities to retreat, but this would have to be tested.

Tom

 

[MeteorPunch]

This may have something to do with the way the AI handles captured artillery different than self-built artillery, as people have reported here.

This is really cool if it could lead to making the AI use artillery better.

 

[nick0515]

Hmmm I guess also if you gave charm barrier to all improvements, then you could have artillery that only targets buildings, and you wouldn't need to come up with an explanation for why one building type (with charm barrier) allows all others to be destroyed before it can be by charm artillery. Definitely has potential for guerilla/terrorist units as you mentioned. You could have a terrorist bomb-planter (for want of a better name) unit that destroys improvements. Couldn't be a suicide bomber though as it would be bombarding from a distance. The attack annimation could be made to represent planting a bomb rather than firing at the city perhaps. The car bomb unit made by, I think, NavyDawq would work well for this. This could be very useful actually for my Revolution New Zealand scenario.

So the AI actively marches these units up to your cities to attack you?

Cheers

Nick

 

[Pounder]

I've had wonders destroyed by artillery/bombard before, only happened a couple times in all these years, but it can happen.

If you had it happen within 20 minutes, it sounds like a less random occurance with charm.

 

[WildWeazel]

...and here I thought this was going to be a thread about a CFCer getting out and meeting a girl.

So, if I'm understanding correctly, artillery units with the Charm flag will be used by the AI as artillery should be, but it can only damage buildings in cities and not units or terrain improvements?

 

[Steph]

After all tehse years, I can still be astonished by some of Firaxis Exotic Programming.

 

[Ares de Borg]

Does it work only on Artillery, or also on planes? (Think Wild Weasel missions!)

 

[Virote_Considon]

A good use for it would be giving an improvement a high defense and bombard defense rating and the charm barrier flag, so that the only way of taking a city with it in would be to use the charm unit first.

 

[Balthasar]

When you get to testing non-artillery units, test using charm and enslave together; I have a theory....

 

[Blue Monkey]

When you get to testing non-artillery units, test using charm and enslave together; I have a theory....

"I have a cunning plan..."

I was also going to request experiments with other unit types. Hopefully the effects of the charm flag can be isolated for every unit type.

All your work will be invaluable when Steph incorporates the findings into his tool set for scenario designers.

 

[General 666]

Sounds like the Charm barrier is something like the Victory Point Location. But Artillery ONLY.
That means we could set the barrier on wished targets on the map.
But Ares` Wild Weasel would be cool too.

Cool discovery ,Tom.

 

[tom2050]

The Charm flag can be checked still with naval and air units, so it's likely it may still work with air/naval bombard! , but I cannot test it now, I have to leave for a short while. I had a minor medical situation this morning, but all is okay.

Later tonight, I will test Charm with air/naval units.
Charm with enslave
Charm against Charm Barrier improvements with high defense (make sure it still works on those)
See if Charm effects fast units ability to retreat
See if Charm units can damage improvements
See if my own Charm can get a girl with ease
and Steph said it perfect, Firaxis Exotic Programming

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AI will actively march it's Charm troops up to cities (with defenders if A/D is 0) and attack cities, it also places some of them in cities. It will attack other units with it's Cham artillery, although it doesn't seem to do anything, but some other flag could be missing to get the full Charm effect.

I'm pretty sure that it only works on buildings, as once the Charm Barrier bldg was destroyed, I did a further hundred Charm attacks with artillery and nothing...

If normal artillery acted like charm artillery, it would be a game changer... or if charm artillery could somehow be coerced to attack land units (like using lethal flag) that would be great.

Tom

 

[tom2050]

Charm artillery bombardments will destroy land improvements (roads, mines, irrigation) but only if no unit is standing on that tile, otherwise it never destroys roads, mines, etc.

Lethal land doesn't do anything for Charm artillery, they still cannot target a land unit.

It seems sometimes Charm artillery destroys the Charm Barrier building first, and not other buildings beforehand when Lethal Land and Enslave were enabled, seems one of these flags caused this... because 3 tests in a row destroyed the Charm Barrier building first, and ignored the others... which is quite different from before. When I reverted back to no enslave and no lethal land, other buildings were destroyed first, and then the Charm Barrier building.

Enslave still works if a Charm artillery unit attacks and wins, but doesn't seem to make any different when bombarding (shots still miss units completely).

Fast (2+ speed) non-Charm units can still retreat from slow (1 Speed) charm units, so nothing there.

Air Units and Sea Units with Charm enabled act the same way as Charm Artillery units, they destroy all buildings first (excpet for Palace and Wonder) and then destroy Charm Barrier Building when using Bombard.

Tom

 

[wolf_brother]

Weird. It's such a messy process its hard to imagine what purpose this could have served.

Simply give all improvements the Charm Barrier, and all artillery the Charm flag. Viola, the AI uses artillery like a human player would (somewhat).

This is an amazing discovery tom!

 

[nick0515]

Simply give all improvements the Charm Barrier, and all artillery the Charm flag. Viola, the AI uses artillery like a human player would (somewhat).

This is an amazing discovery tom!

Though, if I understand correctly, this will mean that artillery can never damage units. Of course you can have two types of artillery, one for units and one for buildings.

 

[wolf_brother]

Of course you can have two types of artillery, one for units and one for buildings.

The difference between field guns and siege engines?

Of course then the question becomes how to get the AI to use field guns on units outside of cities, and how to use siege weapons on cities and infrastructure.

 

[Takhisis]

What happens if every single building in the game is a Charm Barrier?