[MODULE] Better Recon Units

This module for Rise from Erebus was spawned from a discussion on the #erebus chatroom, combined with my own personal desire to rebalance the unit lines. I will probably post more modules in the future overhauling mounted and naval units, and possibly others.

This module improves the Recon line in the following ways:

-Increases the bonuses against animals that Scouts, Hunters, Rangers, and Beastmasters get to +100% (up from +50%). Recon units will now always be the best at dealing with animal units.
-Grants the Subdue Animals promotion to Rangers for free.
-Grants the Subdue Animals and Subdue Beasts promotions to Beastmasters for free.
-Grants Scouts, Hunters, Rangers, and Beastmasters a +20% bonus against Savages (barbarians). This should allow these units to explore the world with less fear, but the other unit lines will still generally be better at killing barbarians.



EDIT: The previous version of this module was made with RifE v1.12. I have now updated the file for v1.20. If you downloaded the previous version of this module, you may get errors when trying to play RifE v1.20.

Also fixed Beastmasters, Jotnar recon units, and added several others that were left out.



EDIT2: I decided to make Pillaging Recon a separate module. With this module Scouts, Hunters, Rangers, and Beastmasters will be able to pillage, with the exception of Trackless (Sidar scouts) and D'teshi recon units. I had to make new entries for the D'teshi recon units to prevent them from pillaging.

This second module requires the previous Better Recon module, and the new D'teshi recon units have the improved bonuses against animals and barbarians.

Also, I was torn on whether or not Divided Souls should be able to pillage, but ultimately I allowed them to. If you disagree, post your opinion in this thread.

Art for the D'teshi recon units has been fixed in this next version.

 

interesting

thank you

 

Cool idea. My lowly scouts thank you.

 

I have a question for you guys:

Should scouts/hunters/rangers/beastmasters also be allowed to pillage? I already allow them to in my games, I was wondering whether I should add that to this module. Even with the above-listed bonuses, recon is still a very very niche unit line (decent at exploring, dealing with animals; now think about how much of your games involve exploring or animals compared to how many melee units you build...). Pillaging would make them slightly more useful in warfare, and I don't think it'd be too overpowered.

But if you guys are against pillaging, then I'll leave it out.

 

I don't need them to pillage, and I don't build enough (at any one time) that it would matter.

 

It would be overpowered for D'Tesh, so you should block it from them.

 

If you decide to allow pillage, there are some units you need to consider:

1) The D'tesh recon, like Deon, mentioned.

2) Any invisible units, which off the top of my head are: the Sidar scout, Sidar Ghost (somewhat), Shadows.

And take into consideration that if you block these from pillaging, then it is a nerf to them since pillaging would be the new standard.

 

I like it. Will give it a try.

 

What about allowing Hunters and Rangers to build Camps? They could in Age of Ice and allowing a hunter to... hunt doesn't seem like an entirely unreasonable. Technically it's a simple XML hack, so it wouldn't be hard to implement. Only question is, can the AI handle it or would the AI spend time just building Hunters instead of Workers?

 

For the AI to handle it any 'worker' unit must be able to build roads.

Adepts can only build nodes for humans, the AI uses workers somehow. The same could be used for hunters, let humans build camps with them, AI uses workers.

 

That requires DLL workarounds, I'd prefer to NOT use any more of those. Annoying enough when the AI builds mana nodes with workers.

 

Fine, give hunters a spell that creates camps.

Or not, I rarely used hunters to build camps when it was possible.

 

Why do you want hunters when you get SoK which can build whatever?

 

I decided to make Pillaging Recon a separate module (download in the first post of this thread). With this module Scouts, Hunters, Rangers, and Beastmasters will be able to pillage, with the exception of Trackless (Sidar scouts) and D'teshi recon units. I had to make new entries for the D'teshi recon units to prevent them from pillaging, but they don't properly display in the pedia with their appropriate art. That will have to be fixed later.

This second module requires the previous Better Recon module, and the new D'teshi recon units have the improved bonuses against animals and barbarians.

Also, I was torn on whether or not Divided Souls should be able to pillage, but ultimately I allowed them to. If you disagree, post your opinion in this thread.



EDIT: I realized another thing. My new D'tesh-specific recon units are interfering with the art, causing vanilla art to show up instead of their civ-appropriate art. So I'll have to fix that.

EDIT2: Also, captured units are not converted to the civ's UU version of them. And since the stealth promo is autoacquire, the D'tesh can capture enemy recon units and they will become invisible pillaging machines. I can remove autoacquire from the promotion, but I'll have to create unique units for all D'teshi recon in order for all of them to start with it.

 

Actually this is something I was always using as tactics. I tried to grab a Hero of Foxford early in many D'Tesh games and to use invisible recon werewolves of other factions .

 

In which case it's not a problem, human players gets a mild advantage over the AI. (Workers can still build Camps, and I see no reason to take that away) The concern was that the AI might have built lots of Hunters because it had one deer in it's territory and then ended up with an army that didn't necessarily play to it's strengths.

 

As long as you successfully block AI recon from trying to build camps. The issue is that AI tries to use the "worker" to build road and goes nuts when it can't.

I have no idea how difficult it is to block the AI to use recon to build when they can. Might be as easy as blocking it in xml, or as Valkrionn implied it requires hard-coding in the dll.

 

It is in the DLL. Trust me, I've looked before.

 

I uploaded a new version of the Pillaging Recon module that fixes the art for D'teshi recon units. Not sure if I will worry about overhauling their recon line further to prevent captured units from getting invisible.

 

dumb question, but how do we install? Just plop the extracted files into:

..\Firaxis Games\Sid Meier's Civilization 4\Beyond the Sword\Mods\Rise from Erebus\Assets\XML\Units

?